


Patience

by DasMervin, MrsHyde (DasMervin)



Series: The Writing on the Wall [22]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angels are Dicks, Animals, Beaches, Bitchy Castiel, Bitchy Dean, Blowjobs, Bobby puts up with so much crap, Cas has a sister now too, Cas is a dork, Cas is also a snake, Castiel in a suit, Castiel won, Chessmaster Castiel, Clubbing, Cuddling, Cute Castiel, Dean is a sap, Destiel - Freeform, Embarassment, Even Cas, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Flashbacks, Flirting, Fondling, Friendship, Frottage, Gen, Groping, Grumpy Dean, Headcanon, Heavy Petting, Hook-Up, Human Castiel, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Lazy Mornings, Leering, Lube, M/M, Making Eyes, Making Love, Making Out, Manipulative Castiel, Matchmaker Castiel, Matchmaking, Mild Sexual Content, Missionary, Morning After, Morning Sex, Naked Castiel, Nerdy Castiel, Nudism, Nudity, Oblivious Dean, Oblivious Sam, Public Nudity, Quickies, Road Trip, Romance, Scheming Castiel, Shopping, Silk Boxers, Slash, Vacation, Wet Dream, Zoo, adopted family, and totally got laid, bitchy sam, discussion of sex, humping, safe sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:07:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1285513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DasMervin/pseuds/DasMervin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DasMervin/pseuds/MrsHyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean, Sam, and Bobby are all used to Cas by this point, and are either amused by his antics or simply don’t notice them anymore. To an outsider, however, Cas is still just about as weird (and awkward) as it can get.</p><p>Castiel, through the eyes of his “sister-in-law.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Patience

**Author's Note:**

> All right—let us preface this fic by saying that we have always enjoyed the characters introduced to be the boys’ love interests. We loved Jess and Cassie and Sarah in S1, we liked Jo and Madison in S2, and we enjoyed Lisa from S3 and S5-6. We liked Ruby in that she was a nasty villain who manipulated Sam to a tee, and we liked Anna before she was brainwashed and the symbolism of her short, sweet, redemption-with-an-angel relationship with Dean in contrast to Sam’s violent, bloody, downfall-with-a-demon relationship with Ruby. 
> 
> We just wanted to get that out front, to make it clear that we don’t just hate the female love interests in SPN just for the sake of it, before we make the following statement:
> 
> WE COULDN’T STAND AMELIA FROM SEASON 8.
> 
> She was rude, she was thoughtless, she was whiny, she was cruel, she had no chemistry with Sam, and her wangsty persona was nothing like the previous strong and sassy women-who-had-tough-times-but-overcame-them that Sam had been previously attracted to. We feel that we understood what the writers were going for, that the relationship they were trying to write would have so perfectly paralleled the events of the rest of the season—Benny’s relationship with Andrea moving him to change his lifestyle, and Dean cutting Benny out of his life to hunt just the way Sam had to cut Amelia out for the job—but they _failed_! We hated her! And we know that we weren’t alone in that opinion, but please, believe us when we say that it is not at all influenced by any irrational hate of the boys’ love interests on our part—we just couldn’t stand her for her own sake. She was a very poor character, in our opinions, and her relationship with Sam was a complete failure on the part of the writers.
> 
> And that was the backdrop of the show when we were writing these asides, and so unsurprisingly, we decided we wanted to try our hand at writing Sam what we hoped to be a decent love interest, just so he wouldn’t be stuck out in the cold while Dean is having all that angelsex and Bobby is getting lucky with the Sheriff. We’ve borrowed Amelia’s name, just because we are sort of intending our story to run parallel to the lines and events of canon, and she has dark wavy hair just because that’s generally the type of girl Sam goes for, but beyond that the resemblance ends. The love interest we’ve written for Sam is her own character and is otherwise nothing like the canon Amelia. We know it’s always a touchy thing, writing an OFC romance for any of the boys, but we hope that you’ll give it a try—and we’ll be satisfied with nothing more than the faint praise that she is hopefully better than S8 Amelia.
> 
> Mrs. Hyde

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Story of How Sam Got the Girl—and the role Cas (and Dean) played in it.

_March 2027_

Sam slowly slid into wakefulness, blinking a little in the soft light of the late morning sun filtering in through the curtains. He briefly thought about lifting his head to check the clock, but decided it wasn’t worth it. So he just closed his eyes again and burrowed down deeper into his pillow, nosing into the soft curls by his face, tightening his arm where it was draped over the smooth, slim form beside him, skimming one hand up to cup the soft weight of a breast.

There was a little _hmm_ of pleasure, and then the bed was moving, and Amy rolled over to face him. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she murmured, dragging her fingertips over his chest, and with a saucy curve of her lips, she tweaked his nipple and slid her knee up between his thighs.

There was really only one reply Sam could give to that.

It was just a morning quickie, but Sam saw nothing wrong with that. Particularly since he’d acquitted himself quite well last night—and Amy, too. They could both take it easy this morning.

Sam rolled off of Amy and away with a sigh, this time looking over at the clock; it was half past eleven. The mattress shifted, and he looked back down at Amy as she moved to rest her head on his chest, and he obligingly curled one arm around her.

“How long will you be here this time?” she asked after a while.

Sam shrugged into his pillow. “Dunno,” he grunted. “A while, I hope—but we just have to leave when we have to leave.” He looked down at the crown of her dark head. “You know how it is.”

Amy chuckled a little. “Yeah, I know how it is.” She looked up, and moved her hand to cradle his jaw. “It’s a tough job, off saving the world, but somebody’s gotta do it.” And Sam could only smile and press a kiss on her palm.

Sam had been with Amy for over three years now, and there were times like these that he still couldn’t believe his luck. If nothing else, he finally saw the allure for hunters to run as families—and why Dean had been so devastated to lose Lisa all those years ago. Because there really was nothing like having a girlfriend who knew—really _knew_ —what he did for a living. Because Amy did know—and she understood.

She ran The Barbershop on the west side of Sioux Falls—as in, the bar of the same name. It was a family-owned joint with an old-style barber pole outside, and it had been Bobby’s favorite haunt for years, since even before he was a hunter, way back when Amy’s dad ran the place. He was in semi-retirement now, doing the books and working behind the scenes, and now Amy was the front man and the main bartender.

Ever since Cas had joined their happy little hunting crew, he and Dean had been making much more regular stops back at Bobby’s, so it wasn’t too surprising that they’d sort of fallen into the habit of going to the same bar that Bobby favored when they were in town. Funnily enough, it was also the same bar that Cas had taken to haunting once he’d been allowed outside on his own; he had a regular fleecing operation going on over there, scouting out customers as marks for his poker game. He had never gotten good enough at darts or pool to make a racket out of it, but his angelic memory had turned him into a wicked card-counter, and his poker face couldn’t be beat. Anyone who wasn’t a regular was fair game, as far as he was concerned.

That was where Sam had met Amy—obviously. He’d seen her just about every time he came in, of course, but that was just to order a drink. Dean had hit on her, naturally, and she good-naturedly played along, but both of them knew it didn’t mean anything. Sam, though, quite by accident, had managed to strike up a conversation with her one evening—on geology, of all ridiculous things—and had left his three companions to their own devices and sat up at the bar all evening.

After that, if he was passing through and stopped by the bar, his conversations with her were a lot less accidental.

He hadn’t been fooling himself, though—it wasn’t like it could go anywhere serious. No real home, no real job, usually wanted by the law and putting his life at risk at least once a week—he wasn’t much of a catch. But even so, that one night three years ago when Amy had given him a very pointed look and told him that she didn’t have any plans that evening after her shift was over…well. No harm in a hookup.

Except they had _kept_ hooking up. It got to the point that it wasn’t a matter of “if” he went by the bar when he was in town, and more along the lines of “when;” if he stopped by Sioux Falls, he wound up back at her house every time. And even though the sex was good, it stopped being just about that pretty quickly: he’d stay the night, have breakfast with her in the morning, and if it was her day off, he’d take her to dinner in the evening, and maybe a movie. And then things started moving out of Sioux Falls, too—they started exchanging emails and phone calls (even including a bout or two of very steamy phone sex), saying they missed each other and looking forward to when they’d see each other again. He had clothes in her drawers and a toothbrush in her bathroom, he found the occasional stray sock of hers that got into his bag by accident (and a pair of lacy panties that she’d put there entirely on purpose), she would pack up food and make him cookies for the road, and one of her paintings hung in Bobby’s library. And even though he and Amy hadn’t really talked about being exclusive, he had found himself turning down offers he got from women while on the road, using the excuse that he was already with someone.

The longer it went on, the more guilt had begun to gnaw at him. He didn’t know when or where it had happened, but the point was that it had stopped being just a hookup; he _liked_ Amy. He _cared_ about her, was comfortable and happy with her—was dangerously close to falling in love, even—and there he had been, _lying_ to her, just like he had any other girl he’d tried to get close to in the past. He wasn’t just some guy; he was _Sam Winchester_ , and he didn’t think it was arrogance on his part to say it like that. He’d never be able to settle down; every day of his life he dealt with things that normal people didn’t know about— _shouldn’t_ have to know about. It had been bad enough with Jess, hiding how he grew up—at least then he thought he’d gotten out of that life. Here he was still up to his eyes in all sorts of supernatural shit that would just as soon have his guts for garters. Or Amy’s, for that matter.

She’d never asked him where he went, what he did when he wasn’t with her, and he in turn never told her, but there was a point when a simple omission turned into a lie. It wasn’t fair to her, to always be sweeping in, taking advantage of her kindness and her generosity, and then skipping town just as quick, but always expecting her to be waiting for him when he reappeared. Because he was never going to settle down—he _couldn’t_ ever settle down—and he couldn’t ask her to put up with that.

So, after two whole years, two of the most contented years of hunting that he’d ever lived, he’d finally sacked up and was going to make himself end it. He was weak enough to let her take him home for one last night of it, and when he took her to bed he tried to show her everything he wasn’t going to be able to say. But afterwards, cuddled close to her in their nest of blankets, he knew he was just going to have to do it.

“Amy?” he’d said heavily.

“Hmm?” Her voice had been slightly muffled from where her face was half-buried in her pillow; her hand curled around his forearm that he had wrapped around her from behind.

He’d kissed her shoulder, very gently. “I—I’ve never said what I—what Dean and I do when we’re not in Sioux Falls,” he’d started, his voice slow and halting, her skin soft against his lips.

There was a snort from the pillow next to him. “Yeah, I know—and don’t worry, I don’t wanna know any more than I already do.”

The words in Sam’s mouth had died in confusion; all he’d managed was a brilliant, “What?”

Amy lifted her head to give him a wry look over her shoulder. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate what you guys do—but one zombie attack was way more than I ever wanted to deal with,” she said decisively. “I’ll leave any other monsters to you.”

Sam stared, and then had scrambled into a half-sitting position so he could see her face. “ _Zombies?!_ Amy—what—what are you saying—?”

Amy had moved then, rolling onto her back so she could look up at him, her brow slightly furrowed but her eyes amused. “I guess you wouldn’t remember me—back in 2010, I’d have been seventeen, I think? I was still in high school, anyway, and James was still in mid-high. That was the year everything was going crazy—storms, floods, earthquakes, flu epidemics—it was like the world was ending or something.” Her eyes took on a slightly faraway look. “And then people started coming back from the dead. My grandparents both came back during all that—it seemed great at first, but then all the dead people started going crazy and trying to kill everyone.” Her gaze sharpened. “But we survived, because of crazy old Bobby Singer—he wasn’t just the old drunk we all thought he was—and his two friends helped us get armed and ready to fight them off.”

Sam had gaped down at her. Amy had looked up at his dumbfounded expression and chuckled. “Daddy had us all hiding out in the basement for most of that insanity, but I remember the three of you—especially _you_ —passing out shotguns and telling us how to kill them.” She reached up and pushed on his chin; he snapped his mouth shut as she leaned forward. “You were so… _heroic._ I had a terrible crush on you for years after that,” she whispered and kissed him.

“You—you _knew_?” Sam finally managed to speak. “You’ve known this _whole time_?”

“Well, yeah.” She had given him a very dry look. “What, you think I’m the type of girl to just pick up any homeless bum who hangs around my bar?”

Sam didn’t have an answer to that, and she just laughed at him again. “Don’t tell me you were going to try the old ‘break it off for my own safety’ gag, were you?” When he hadn’t answered that either, she’d just laughed harder. “Oh my God, you _were_!”

Sam’s mouth tightened; that wasn’t funny. Of course, that had only made her keep laughing—she’d always teased him about making a “bitch-face” when he was pissed off (which was complete bullshit— _Dean_ got bitchy when he was mad, not him).

She finally stopped laughing, and reached up to stroke his shoulder, and he couldn’t help the way his face softened then. “So—you know—and you don’t care?” he asked. “That I can’t—that I’m always gonna be on the road like this? That I deal with ghosts and monsters and—and zombies on a regular basis?”

Amy had smiled. “No—I _do_ care. Because that’s what makes you _you_ —the heroic monster hunter.” She skimmed her hands up to slide her fingers into his hair. “That’s a horrible job—but you do it anyway.” Her foot moved to rub the side of his leg. “And maybe I’m not Buffy the Vampire Slayer or anything, but if I can be here for you when you need a break—well, I’m doing my part then, I guess.” Her eyes were soft and bright. “And I’m happy the way things are.”

Sam had looked down at her, his heart thumping in his chest, and then he’d swept her into his arms. And after he’d kissed every inch of her, when he sank into her heat with a guttural groan, her breath hot in his ear and her nails digging into his back, he’d finally whispered that he loved her.

Sam had only _thought_ that the two years with her before had been the best—they were nothing compared to being with her now that he knew that she knew he was a hunter. Now he understood, really understood, why Dean was always so eager to get back to Cas, why Bobby would disappear off with the Sheriff. Because it was somewhere to _rest_. A safe, quiet haven between jobs. When he was with Amy, he could set the job aside and not have to worry about anything—not even about hiding what he did. He didn’t talk to her too much about it—and that was for her own safety as much as anything, but also because she was quite up front about really not wanting to know too much about what went bump in the night. She knew just enough so she could listen when he needed to talk, but not so much that she thought he was a freak or the Antichrist or something. He could just be with her and be _himself_. And even though he could never have a real home of his own, he felt like he had found the next best thing.

His arm tightened around her where she was still resting her head on his chest. Sometimes, lying here with her in the mornings, he thought that he could just keep going on like this forever, riding out, hitting the road and doing the job, and then coming back here—back _home_ —when he was done.

Bobby certainly thought he should. He liked Amy and had known her long enough that he even took it upon himself to make the obligatory threat to Sam that he treat her well. Dean ragged on him about her, of course; Sam was mostly just glad that he finally had an impervious shield against Dean’s overcompensating jokes about Sam never getting laid.

Thinking about Bobby and Dean caused Sam’s mood to sour slightly. Jody was a fairly regular visitor to the house, sometimes helping to cook dinner with Cas or just bringing in takeout, and the five of them would all spend long evenings drinking beer (only one for Cas) and laughing (also not so much for Cas). Sam never felt like a fifth wheel or anything; Bobby was getting old and wasn’t the demonstrative type anyway, and Dean didn’t do that shit with Cas around anyone else, so it was all just happy camaraderie rather than cozy domesticity, but lately Bobby had been suggesting that Sam bring Amy to the house once in a while.

Just last night he’d said that, actually—said that tonight was Jody’s night off and she said something about picking up Chinese, and since Amy usually took a night off when Sam was in town, he ought to bring her over too.

Sam had just shaken his head. “Bobby—you’re nuts if you think I’m gonna bring her around you people—she’ll run screaming.”

Bobby snorted. “Don’t be an idjit, boy—I’ve known her since she was a kid. Anyway, me ‘n’ Jody go have a burger at the Barbershop all the time, and bein’ a bartender, you know she can handle boneheads like Dean. Hell, she even likes Cas already—gives him his one beer a night an' looks the other way when he’s conning her customers.”

Sam had rolled his eyes and turned away, dismissing the idea—only Bobby had to go and fire one last parting shot. “‘Sides,” he threw out there, “he’s the one who got you two together anyway—if Amy can handle that, she can handle anything.”

Sam had frozen in his tracks. “ _What?!_ ” he demanded, spinning around to look incredulously at Bobby.

Bobby’s eyebrows had raised in mild amusement. “Didn’t you know? That boy’s a regular matchmaking industry.” He grimaced slightly. “Much as is pains me to admit it, the son of a bitch is the one who gave Jody ‘n’ me a push—an’ did the same for you ‘n’ Amy, too.”

Sam gawped, and Bobby’s smirk took on a positively devilish quality as he dropped his next bomb. “Best part, though,” he said with sadistic glee, “is that he only did it to get you out of the house so he could get it on with Dean.”

Sam closed his mouth and glared at Bobby’s smug face. “He did _not_ ,” he said firmly, and then spun on his heel and marched out the door, determined to forget even the slightest insinuation otherwise.

And he had—for all of last night, anyway. Only now, lying here with Amy, that ugly idea had resurfaced, and now he just sat there with it gnawing at his brain.

Finally, he squirmed a little beneath Amy’s weight before finally asking, “Amy?”

She looked up, and he shifted uncomfortably again. “How did we—why did you—back when we first got together, did you—were we set up?” he finally asked.

One of her dark eyebrows lifted, a perfectly sardonic gesture. “What—you mean you didn’t know?” she asked.

_…Oh no._

* * *

_Three years earlier…_

“You want _what_?!”

Bobby knew Cas was about to pull some new stunt the minute he saw him; he could tell from that determined look in his eye when he came down the stairs that he was gearing up to make some kind of announcement that was gonna piss him off. But even though Bobby had come to recognize that look, it didn’t mean that whatever Cas was about to say wouldn’t be a nasty surprise.

Cas was blinking at him, as usual looking vaguely surprised by Bobby’s appalled reaction; you’d have thought he’d be used to it by now. “I want to arrange a sexual encounter with Dean,” he repeated patiently. Only this time he added, “And I need your help to do it.”

Oh, _hell_ no. Bobby didn’t care why he was doin’ this, didn’t care what he was tryin’ to pull, didn’t care about any of that—he was _so_ not getting dragged into whatever crazy-ass plot Cas was tryin’ to set up. “ _No_ ,” he said firmly. “You wanna mess around with Dean, that’s your business—you leave me _out_ of it, understand?”

Cas just shook his head, undeterred. “I can’t, Bobby—I need your cooperation,” he said. “It’s very important,” he added soulfully, like that was gonna convince him or something. “Dean and I rarely have sex when he is here anymore, but we haven’t had an opportunity to go on a hunt by ourselves where we can have sex in nearly five months. I need you to help me.”

“ _No!_ ” Bobby yelled. “And I don’t _care_ that you’re high and dry, I am _not_ gonna help you get into Dean’s pants!”

Cas’s face was a mixture of upset and petulance. “Bobby, surely you’ve noticed that Dean becomes irritable when he has been denied sex for long periods of time,” he said, his voice slightly scolding.

“Oh, don’t you even try that with me,” Bobby warned. “Don’t you try to paint this like it’s about Dean, you little shit—you just wanna get laid.”

Cas gave him that patient, condescending look that was pure _angel_ and it made Bobby want to punch him in the face. “My needs and wants are immaterial compared to Dean’s wellbeing,” he said serenely.

“You lie like a rug,” Bobby said flatly, and was pleased to see Cas was no longer looking self-satisfied and looked offended instead. Bobby plowed on before Cas could start in again. “Look, boy—I’ve told you time and time again that I want _no part_ of what you and Dean do—and _Dean_ doesn’t want me to have any part of it, either, I can tell you that right now,” he informed him. “You wanna fool around? Fine. But there is nothing on this earth that could make me play along with whatever scheme you’re cooking up—I am _not_ going to help you have sex with Dean!”

Cas looked sulky throughout his diatribe, which usually meant that the discussion was over. But Bobby felt a flash of alarm when Cas’s expression suddenly smoothed out into a look of such wounded innocence that there was no way it was anything but contrived. Cas looked at him with those damn tilted eyebrows and said plaintively, “All I was going to ask that you do is that you have your own sexual tryst with Sheriff Mills.”

Bobby stared at him. Cas looked back, all big eyes and pleading.

“I am going to listen to you explain this plan,” Bobby finally said, his voice measured and even, “only because I have to know just how the hell you’re getting from Point A to Point B.”

Cas’s face lit up, and he immediately bounced up from his chair and came around to stand on Bobby’s side of the desk. “First,” he started, “it has been my observation that Dean is considerably more reluctant to engage in sex with me when you and Sam are nearby, hence the reason that we usually wait for sex when we are alone after a hunt—so the primary purpose is to remove you from the house.”

Bobby’s brow lowered in indignation; Cas seemed to notice and quickly went on. “I of course would not want to summarily send you out of your own home,” he said, and he actually tried to sound sincere about it, “and definitely not without another place to stay—so the obvious solution is for you to go spend the night with Jody.”

Oh, but he wasn’t done. “But this will actually serve a dual purpose,” he said, clearly warming to the topic, leaning against the edge of the desk. “I have also found that when you or Sam are having a sexual encounter of your own, Dean is considerably more receptive to sex as well. So, if you are both away from the house _and_ having sex with Sheriff Mills, then in all likelihood, when Dean comes back from the bar this evening, he will be quite willing to have sex with me.” Cas finished, looking incredibly pleased with himself.

“You’re a manipulative little weasel, you know that?” Bobby asked him when he finally found his voice.

Cas was looking lofty again and actually had the nerve to claim that, “I am looking out for Dean’s welfare.”

“You’re full of shit, is what you are.”

Cas sniffed. “So—as you can see,” he said, otherwise ignoring Bobby’s insult, “there is nothing objectionable in your role in this arrangement. Now,” he looked up at the clock. “It is six thirty. Tonight is Sheriff Mills’s evening off; I contacted her earlier today to ask if she would be amenable to you joining her this evening for dinner followed by sexual intercourse, and she was. She is expecting you at seven o’clock.”

Bobby’s jaw had fallen open in horror. Cas just sat there on the edge of the desk, looking expectantly at him. Bobby finally unlocked his throat enough to speak. “Please tell me that you didn’t say it like that,” he said weakly, despite already knowing the answer.

Cas’s brows knitted. “How else would I say it?” he wanted to know.

Bobby buried his face in his hand. There was a brief, blessed moment of silence, which Cas ruined when he started talking again. “Now—you have thirty minutes, Bobby. I suggest you complete any necessary preparations and then go to the Sheriff’s house. She would probably not appreciate it if you were late.”

Bobby looked up, fixing Cas with a baleful eye. “Well, you’ve just got the whole board arranged to your liking then, don’t you?” he sneered.

Cas looked pleased. “Yes,” he affirmed. “I believe I organized things to best benefit everyone involved.”

“Especially _yourself_ ,” Bobby said nastily, but he knew when he’d been backed into a corner so he stood up; he had just enough time for a shower before he’d need to leave for Jody’s. He was halfway to the stairs when a thought occurred to him, and he turned back around to look at Cas, who was practically radiating smugness. “Okay, wise guy—riddle me this,” he said. “So you’ve got me out of the way for the night, huh? Then just what were you planning on doing about Sam?”’

Cas was unperturbed. “Don’t worry—I’ve already made arrangements for him as well,” he said placidly.

Bobby stared at him with a mixture of wariness and alarm. “Cas,” he said slowly, “what did you do?”


	2. Come Together Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With all the subtlety and tact you’ve come to expect, Cas puts the wheels in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, time to see just what Cas did that afternoon in the bar.
> 
> Mrs. Hyde

_Earlier that afternoon…_

Amelia Richards—Amy to pretty much everyone who knew her—liked her job. It was the easy comfort of security, of knowing what her life would be like even when she was young, and the satisfaction of serving people well and offering the occasional advice or simply a willing ear to her customers.

Her great-grandfather had started the bar. His father had been a barber, and so in both a nod to his roots and to give the bar a quaint name that doubled as an excuse to angry wives, he called it The Barbershop. He first opened its doors back in 1933, right after the repeal of Prohibition. Despite the Depression that had been heavy at the time, business had still boomed, as it had for many of the other new bars that cropped up all over the country at the time. However, his bar, somewhat on the farther edge from town and thus removed from competition, kept going, even after the initial fever of legal alcohol consumption wore off. The Barbershop just kept on, opening its doors every night, and turning a steady profit year-in and year-out. 

Since it was a lucrative establishment, it stayed open, and made enough to let the family start expanding, buying more properties in the area, but The Barbershop always remained family owned and operated; her grandfather took over in 1955, and her own father had taken the helm in 1987, and since her kid brother James had preferred to run off to MIT to get his engineering degree and then move on to a big job in New York, here she was, continuing the tradition. Some kids (like James) rebelled against the idea of going into the family business, but she’d never been one of them. Amy had practically been a fixture at the bar since she was little, visiting Dad at work, pestering the bouncers, and sometimes helping with odd jobs. Once she was older, Dad started letting her help out beyond just taking out the trash or washing glasses. Oh, nothing official, since she was underage, but he did let her have a look at the inner workings of the place and help with the management of the other bars and restaurants they owned, in preparation for when it would be her turn.

And she had looked forward to when it would be her turn. Her grades and tests scores had been good enough to get her a full ride at Cornell, where she double-majored in business and history, with a minor in art. And once she was finished, she came back home and started working in the bar. Smart investments on her family’s parts, not to mention the bar and the rest of their properties trucking along, had let her dad retire early three years ago—well, semi-retire; he got bored doing nothing and so still had a hand in the management end of things. But Amy was responsible for the day-to-day work, and still held the position of chief bartender at the Barbershop.

She liked it—she honestly did. Her dad had worried for a while at first; the Barbershop had only ever been managed by men, and the atmosphere and the clientele sometimes reflected it. Oh, there were no rowdies, but there was a rather more masculine feel to the place, what with the stuffed animal heads on the walls and the big screen TVs all set to sports channels. But Amy had never had a problem; after growing up with it, she didn’t even notice it anymore. The regulars had known her since before she even took over and they generally behaved themselves, and any unsavory sorts usually haunted the bars closer to downtown, not over here on the fringes of things. Her regulars were more the salt-of-the-earth type, not the kind to cause trouble, even if she was a girl. And anyway, she’d patched holes in the bar wall, she paid attention to all those big screen TVs while she was tidying up, and she’d been maintaining her beloved 1968 Mustang that Dad gave her back when she went off to college, so she could talk sports, cars, and home repair with the best of them; she got along just fine with all the manly-men who frequented her place, and she’d never had a moment of trouble from anyone. If anything, things actually seemed to have improved since she took over. She wasn’t vain, but she wasn’t overly modest either—she may have been thirty-two, but she was a C-cup and worked out and still looked good, and she wasn’t above wearing short-shorts and low-cut tops to improve her tips (which they did).

No, all in all, Amelia Richards liked her life. Yeah, some might say it was boring, but she was happy. The occasional drunken roustabout or bar fight was plenty of excitement for her.

And she knew this because back in her senior year of high school, she’d experienced excitement enough for a lifetime.

To this day she didn’t know what happened, what caused it, or what it _meant_ —and she didn’t want to. As far as she was concerned, there were some things in this world that Man Was Not Meant To Know, or however you wanted to put it. But that wasn’t to say she wasn’t grateful as hell that there were some people who didn’t subscribe to that theory—people who knew what to do when things that you weren’t meant to know suddenly arrived on your front doorstep.

She sure would never have figured that the old junk man who came into her father’s bar at least three times a week was one of them.

Turned out that Bobby Singer’s façade of the old drunk who ran the junk yard was just that—a façade. The night that the west side of Sioux Falls suddenly turned into a Romero flick, Bobby was in the thick of it, rolling along in his wheelchair, trying to explain what was happening, and arming the citizens when the dream of having your loved ones back from the dead suddenly turned into a nightmare.

It wasn’t just him, though—Sheriff Mills, much younger then, was also part of the cavalry, rounding up people who had friends and family that had come back and thus were at risk and getting them somewhere safe. And then there were Bobby’s two young friends, handsome boys named Dean and Sam, who had shown up wielding shotguns and taught them how to protect themselves.

Amy had been only seventeen at the time, and James just twelve, and her father didn’t trust what was going on, not even when his own parents arrived at their door after five years in the grave. He was one of the first to listen to Sam and Dean when they said that things were going to go bad, and had barricaded Amy and her brother and her mom in the basement and had been the one to dispatch his own parents when they stopped being his parents.

That had been the strangest night of Amy’s life—and she was glad to keep it that way.

After all the walking dead were put down and buried, life in Sioux Falls amazingly went back to normal—and not long after, the rest of the world seemed to settle down, too. Amy was more than happy to put the entire insane experience behind her. Not that that was the sort of thing you just _forgot_ ; no, from then on, while she may have avoided looking for trouble, she could sometimes spot stories on the news that didn’t seem quite kosher—and once or twice she even thought that on cameras or pictures of strange crime scenes or natural disasters, she might have spotted Bobby or Sam or Dean lurking in the background, and then she knew that she was safe.

Bobby was still a regular at the Barbershop, even after all that craziness went down. Only change was that her father always gave him his first round on the house—a tradition that she’d merrily continued.

Working in the bar as she did, she got to know her usual clientele pretty well. There was Bobby, of course—who made a miraculous recovery and was up and out of his wheelchair now. Now that she knew he wasn’t just some bum but actually some kind of badass warrior for humanity, she had warmed up to him considerably. She watched him go through his ups and downs, good times and bad times, and during the latter would sometimes give him more than one round for free. There for a while, he’d all but disappeared, and she wondered if he’d moved away (or, God forbid, if he’d lost a battle with something he’d been fighting) but nope, he eventually came back and seemed to settle right back into his old routine.

Lately, though, things seemed to be looking up for him. For one, Amy gleefully watched as Bobby’s solitary nights of drinking slowly gave way to spending happier nights at the bar with Sheriff Mills. Amy thought they were adorable, although she’d certainly never say that to Bobby’s face.

Then there was the fact that apparently Bobby had someone living with him now—family, it seemed. About ten or so years ago, Bobby had begun to bring along company on the nights he wasn’t with the Sheriff—a scruffy, weedy fellow who didn’t talk much and never drank more than one beer was his companion on his off-nights, following him around like a duckling. Amy eventually learned that his name was Cas—odd, but not nearly as odd as the man himself. He never seemed to blink enough, his expression hardly changed, and he never spoke above a rumbling monotone. The only thing that kept him from being creepy was the fact that he was simply _goofy_ —he had absolutely no sense of humor, took everything anyone said literally, and seemed to drive Bobby to complete distraction.

Well, Amy figured that anyone who was with Bobby was okay in her book, weird or no, so she just let Cas be. And yes, she still let him be even after she realized that he was a card shark. The first few times Cas came in, he was always with Bobby. But eventually, he began to visit on his own, and would commandeer the dart board or the pool table for long, solitary games while he nursed his one beer. But those games slowly gave way to him spending his evenings lurking at the back tables with a deck of cards.

He didn’t target her regulars, and as long as he didn’t start anything, she let him run his little scam. Poker games in the back had always been part of the arrangement in the bar—the players kept quiet, and she looked the other way. Caveat Poker, as it were, and if anyone happened to fall into the trap of the Rain Man back there, well, it wasn’t her business. They were breaking the law either way, so she wasn’t about to get involved.

Really, though, over the years she’d developed a sort of fondness for Cas; he was just so dorkily stiff and serious all the time, and he always tipped well. A good customer, and one who had graduated into the ranks of the regulars, unconventional he may have been.

So the years went by, and Amy took over, and Cas and Bobby and sometimes the Sheriff kept coming in. And eventually, their little coterie expanded still further.

Sam and Dean came back to town.

Amy hadn’t really seen them since the night of the living dead; she only had vague memories of two men, larger than life and impossibly handsome—two knight-errant figures ripped straight off of the cover of a romance novel or something equally ridiculous. No surprise that she’d nursed crushes on them for so long.

In reality, Sam and Dean—Winchester, as she found out their last name was—were actually pretty large, both of them towering over her, and she was 5’11” with her heels. And they were good looking, too, even if they were older now—she hadn’t made that up, either. But they were a lot more _real_ , now that she was seeing them in her place on a semi-regular basis. Dean she would best describe as a lovable asshole—the smarmy type who was well aware of how cute he was and flirted with anything that was female and breathing, but he was so sincere and sweet about it that you couldn’t help but like him anyway. He was the better tipper—but with how often he peeked down her shirt, she felt that he owed it to her.

Sam was quieter and could be a little intense at times. Dean seemed to especially enjoy goading him and trying to piss him off—and Sam seemed to bite more often than not. Sucker.

Despite the fact that Dean was the talkative one (and always had to hit on her any time he came in on her shift), it was Sam that she actually got to know. She found out soon enough that there was a razor sharp mind behind those dark eyes of his, and he could talk intelligently about just about any subject she cared to name. If she was forced to name one downside to running the bar, it would be that she didn’t often get a chance to talk about the things that she liked. Art, music, history, architecture—she did major in history, too, after all. Real history, not just a cheap liberal arts degree—she’d taken as many classes as she could.

Turned out that Sam had actually gone to Stanford—and his pre-law degree hadn’t been just an easy ride either. And once he opened up, turned out he could talk as much as Dean.

She was rather embarrassed to admit that she had more than once caught herself looking forward to his visits to the bar. Who else would argue with her about the relative merits of Bierstadt over Moran, laugh with her about historical inaccuracies in “true-story” biopics, or join her in bitching about so-called building restorations that completely ruined the original period design? And even if there was someone else who would, there was no way they could look as cute as he did while they did it.

Yeah—she still had a crush on Sam.

He hadn’t been in town for a while; Bobby and Cas had showed up alone mid-afternoon today, but to her embarrassed pleasure, Sam and Dean had rolled in not long after. Sam had come up to get drinks for both himself and his brother, and his smile had been warm and he’d lingered so long up at the bar that Dean had eventually bellowed across the room for him to quit trying to make time because Amy was way out of his league and to hurry up and bring him his beer already. Sam had rolled his eyes, but his look was apologetic (and slightly embarrassed) as he left. She gave Dean a dry look over Sam’s retreating shoulder; he responded with a positively sleazy grin that made it clear that he thought he had a much better chance with her.

They were apparently having a boys’ night of it; she just kept the beers coming and they stayed at their table, talking and laughing and enjoying their company. It was always Sam or Dean who came up for their rounds, which was why she was quite surprised when, after she sent Willard Franks a double shot of Jack, that she turned around to find Cas regarding her intensely from the other side of the bar.

“Oh—hey, Cas,” she said. He never drank more than one beer and he’d already had it this evening; she thought it was pretty lousy of them to make him be their gofer when he wasn’t having any more. “What can I get you?”

“I will need three more beers, please,” he said seriously, unfolding a wad of cash from the pocket of his jeans. “But I also need to speak with you on a matter of some import.”

Amy raised her eyebrows. “Well, okay—hang on, lemme get these for you.” She turned around, nonplussed, and used the time at the taps filling the glasses to school her features. Cas never had much to say to anyone—what on earth did he want with _her_?

“Here you go,” she said, setting all three frosty glasses down in front of him. “That’s eleven twenty-five.”

Cas very studiously laid out three crumpled fives on the bar. She thanked him and put them in the till—the old drug-store-style manual register that they still used for atmosphere—and then turned back and ask, “So—what’s on your mind?”

Cas gingerly slid onto a stool, his hands folded on the bar. “I wanted to ask you if you would be willing to have sexual intercourse with my friend Sam Winchester tonight.”

Amy’s jaw dropped.

Cas was still going. “I’m sure you understand that our occupation makes long-term romantic interactions difficult, but since Sam regularly returns to Sioux Falls, you have had a chance to become acquainted with him.” His eyes lanced through hers. “I have observed that you experience quickened breathing, dilated pupils, and flushed cheeks when he speaks with you—all signs of sexual interest.”

Amy’s face flamed. Cas didn’t notice and kept talking; she was about to take drastic measures to put a stop to this conversation immediately, except his next words caused her to freeze: “Sam also displays these symptoms when speaking to you, and he has also mentioned you outside of the bar setting in a complimentary manner.”

“He has?” She hadn’t meant to say it, and she was mortified the instant she did.

Cas just nodded seriously. “Yes. He says that you are very intelligent and attractive, and I have seen him admiring your rear when you are turned away from him. So, I wanted to ask you if you would be willing to act on your mutual sexual attraction tonight.”

Amy had absolutely nothing to say. Not even with Cas giving her an expectant look, clearly waiting for an answer from her. Eventually, he seemed to realize that his sell wasn’t working quite as well as he’d hoped, so he decided to try again. “I consider Sam a brother, and I know that he is a very generous and honorable man,” he urged. “And I understand that he always satisfies his sexual partners, so I believe that you would enjoy a tryst with him.” And again he waited.

“…Wow.” She finally found her voice, but it didn’t do her much good, because that was all she could say. “Just— _wow_ , Cas. Seriously?”

Cas’s expression didn’t change. “Yes, I am very serious,” he said. “I believe Sam would be a suitable mate for you.”

“ _Mate?!_ ” she demanded incredulously, forgetting to keep her voice down and grateful for the noise of the bar covering it. “Cas, what do you think this is, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom?”

Cas’s brow furrowed. “I enjoy that show, but I don’t see what bearing it has on this situation.”

Amy rubbed her hand on her forehead; not even finding out that Sam might be into her was worth this humiliation. “Cas,” she said evenly, “I think if Sam wanted to—” she screwed up her face, “—to get together, _he’d_ say so.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Cas answered immediately. “He is…shy.”

“Shy,” she repeated skeptically.

“Yes,” Cas said, completely unfazed by her disbelief. “And…somewhat reticent. Hunters have difficulty establishing relationships with people who don’t know the details of their occupation. But since you do know,” he continued, “I believe that you are in turn a suitable mate for Sam, and if you would approach him, he will respond favorably.”

“Look—Cas,” she said tiredly, “I—I appreciate what you’re trying to do here. I really do. But—this is really too much.”

Cas looked a little crestfallen. “All right—I understand. Sam is rather sexually aggressive—”

“ _Cas!_ ” she squeaked, her face on fire. “Don’t say stuff like that!” How the hell did he even know— _no_ , she was not going to complete that thought. “It’s not appropriate,” she finally managed to say, lame though it was.

Cas looked puzzled. “I would think it would be very appropriate for you to know if you were planning to have intercourse with him,” he said.

“I’m not _planning_ —!” she started hotly, but stopped, and just leaned against the bar with her head in her hand. “I’ll think about it,” she said at last. “Will that be okay?”

“Yes,” Cas said, his level voice actually managing to sound eager. “But I am telling the truth: Sam would be very amenable to sex with you. Tonight,” he added forcefully, and then he skewered her with another one of those pointed stares.

And then he left, just scooping up his beers without another word and taking them back to his table to distribute among his three friends.

It was difficult to keep her mind on her work after that, but Amy did her best, serving up drinks with her usual flourish and trying to appear interested in anything that her customers had to say. And if she got a little distracted now and then, or caught herself sneaking looks at Sam’s back where he was sitting in the far corner, well, after the bombshell that she’d gotten dropped on her, who could blame her?

Cas and Bobby left in the early evening. Bobby gave her a casual wave goodbye as he headed for the door, with Cas trailing along behind him as usual. She would have liked to avoid any more awkwardness from him, but Cas apparently had other ideas, deliberately catching her eye and giving her an intense look, and then flicking his eyes very obviously over to Sam and then back to her.

Amy pinched her mouth and waved him out; he gave one last very pointed look between her and Sam, and then he was gone. Sam and Dean stayed, though, and she felt herself getting more and more antsy. She was glad it was Dean who came up to order their usual dinner of a salad for Sam and a burger for himself; she didn’t think she quite had it in her to face Sam just yet. It was much easier to respond to Dean’s usual smarm at the moment, which she did quite cheerfully as she wrote down his order and sent it to the back.

Luckily, she managed to compose herself before she had to talk to Sam again. After they ate, Dean got himself embroiled in a game of pool; Amy would be willing to wager that the poor sucker he was up against was going to wind up with his pockets considerably lighter by the end of it. But that left Sam alone, and she couldn’t help but blush when she saw him coming towards the bar.

“Hey,” he said, sliding onto a stool.

“Hey yourself,” she said, and cursed herself for sounding breathless. “I ought to start skimming off your take, you know,” she said to cover, gesturing back at Dean with her chin while she wiped the glasses in front of her. “Between the two of you and Cas, this place will start to develop a reputation.”

Sam had the good grace to look ashamed, and she laughed to take any possible seriousness out of her words. “If we’re hurting your business, we’ll stop,” he offered.

She snorted and shook her head. “Nah—you’re fine. Cas only targets people who are just passing through, and you two don’t make a habit of it like he does. And anyway,” she said with a smile, “I always give my regulars a little leeway.”

Sam gave her a sly look. “Really? You think maybe I could get a refill, then?” he said, tapping his almost-empty beer.

“Sure—for three seventy-five,” she answered smartly.

“Guess we don’t get away with that much, huh?”

“I already gave Bobby your first round for free tonight,” she warned, and enjoyed his surprise. “Don’t press your luck.” And she swept down to the taps and drew him a new Blue Moon.

She returned to be presented with a five and a smile. “Not pressing it,” he said.

“I see why Bobby says you’re the smart one,” she said, tapping her nose as she deposited the five in the till.

Sam made a rude noise. “I think one look at Dean should tell you why I’m the smart one,” he scoffed.

Amy gave him a little smirk and slyly said, “Bobby also says that Dean is the good-looking one.”

Sam gave her a dirty look, and she just laughed. Just then, Bryce Dennings called out for another shot, and as she turned around, she caught sight of Sam in the mirror behind the bar—and Cas’s words came back to her.

_What if…what if maybe…_

Keeping one eye trained on the mirror, she very deliberately leaned down to get a fresh bottle of Jameson—

—and with her own eyes, right there reflected in the mirror above the bar, she caught Sam checking out her ass.

She felt hot and jittery when she stood up to pour the whiskey. _Cas had told the truth._

But it still didn’t mean anything—guys just checked girls out, it was the way things worked. And anyway, his brother checked her out all the time, and that didn’t mean anything, didn’t get her worked up. Why should Sam checking her out by any different?

Because Cas had told her a few other things, too. _And were those things true, too?_

She sent the drink down the bar and turned back to Sam; he was smiling at her, his eyes warm, and she found herself grinning rather stupidly back.

She liked Sam. She liked his sense of humor, his brains, and it certainly didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eyes. To say nothing of the fact that he wasn’t just your average Joe hanging around a bar—he did the kinds of things that you only read about in fiction. He was a real-life hero, strolled right out of an urban fantasy novel and into her bar. And she _liked_ him.

And Cas said he liked her, too.

_Well—the only thing I have to lose is my dignity._

Amy took a deep breath. “So,” she said casually, going back to her glasses. “You have any big plans for tonight?”

Sam was mid-drink of his beer; he shook his head as he sat down his glass. Amy couldn’t help but watch his tongue as he licked the foam off his lip. “Nope,” he said. “Just gonna go home, probably.”

Amy looked studiously at her glasses. “I don’t have any plans either,” she said lightly, and flicked her eyes up just in time to see Sam’s eyebrows fly up into his hair. She fought to keep her face from heating but didn’t break eye contact. “Will just be heading home on my own.”

Sam was very still. “Really,” he said after a moment.

“Mm-hmm,” Amy agreed, and slowly wiped her damp hands on her jeans, and felt the corner of her mouth curl up in a tiny smile. “Unless I get a better offer.”

Sam let out a slow breath. “Well—okay, then,” he said, and a dull heat began to uncoil in her middle when she saw him start to smile, too. “Considered it offered.”

Dean chose that moment to appear behind his brother and clap him on the back; Amy didn’t know if she should curse his inconvenient timing or bless him for breaking up the tension before it became awkward. Sam, at least, knew how to react and was looking at his brother with extreme irritation.

“Three hundred bucks, Sammy,” Dean gloated, brandishing a wad of bills. “I still got it.” He beamed at Amy, and then grabbed Sam’s glass and took a long drink. “But I think the dude’s pretty pissed about it—what do you say we head out?”

“Ah—no,” Sam demurred. “You—you go on ahead. I—ah, I think I’ll stay here for a while.”

A crease appeared between Dean’s eyebrows—but it suddenly smoothed out and he turned to Amy with an appraising look. She met his eyes, refusing to be embarrassed, not even when a sly grin stretched his face.

“Okay, then, Sammy,” he said with false kindness. “you just ‘stay here for a while.’ You two can, uh, ‘catch up’.” And he socked Sam’s shoulder hard enough to make Sam snarl at him, dropped a stinky wink in Amy’s direction, and then sauntered towards the door, giving the air a little punch as he went.

Sam was rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Sorry about him,” he said, embarrassed.

Amy snorted; after Cas’s approach, nothing Dean did could embarrass her tonight. “Don’t worry about it. Now,” she said, and leaned forward on the bar top. “My shift is over in thirty minutes—think you can wait to ‘catch up’ till then?”

Sam’s eyes gleamed. “Definitely.”

* * *

As it happened, Cas had been telling the truth about everything. Sam was, in fact, rather sexually aggressive.

And Amy was very, very satisfied.

* * *

_That night…_

Okay. He wasn’t… _mad_ or anything like that. Wasn’t like Dean was gonna begrudge his brother working up the balls to chat up the girl he’d obviously been eyeing for months. And he wasn’t stupid—he knew Amy was sweet on Sam, too. The two of them would sit up there all cozy at the bar and talk about a bunch of nerd shit, and it looked like that turned Amy on as bad as it did Sam.

Pfft—it wasn’t Sam’s nerdiness that always got her to give them a round for free, though, was it? No, that was all Dean’s sheer animal magnetism, is what that was.

But Dean’s magnetism or no, it wasn’t him who Amy had been giving smoldering looks tonight—or all those nights before this one. He’d wondered when Sam was finally gonna quit being a pussy and just ask her out already. Looked like tonight was the night.

Dean wasn’t mad, he really wasn’t. Amy was cool, and it’d be good for Sammy to get some once in a while.

But that just meant that here it was, a Saturday night, and Sam was at the bar, hooking up with a hot chick, and here Dean was, pulling into Bobby’s house alone just to watch TV and probably go to bed early.

Dean blew out a disgruntled breath and then swung himself out of the car. Just because he wasn’t mad didn’t mean it still didn’t kinda rub him the wrong way. This was the opposite of the way things were supposed to be, dammit.

Shaking his head, he ascended the steps in the back and unlocked the door. “Bobby?” he called.

“He’s not here.” Dean swung around into the kitchen to see Cas standing by the sink, drying a plate and glass.

Dean lowered his eyebrows. “Where the hell is he at this hour? Shouldn’t he be taking a sitz bath and gearing up for some Mitch Miller reruns?”

Cas put away his plate in the cabinet before he answered. “Bobby is spending the evening with Sheriff Mills,” he said placidly.

Oh, well—wasn’t that just _great_. Not only was Sam scoring with the hot bartender, but that grey-haired old codger was out makin’ time, too. And once again, here was Dean, sitting at home in the dark at nine o’clock on Saturday night with only the World’s Most Boring Angel to keep him company.

Shit.

Scowling, he stomped over to the fridge and grabbed a beer, opening it and taking a long pull as he walked out into the library and dropped heavily down on the couch. It protested under the weight; he rather hoped it would snap a spring that would poke Sam in the back next time he slept on it.

Grumbling, he took another drink. How the mighty had fallen. Twenty years ago, if someone had told him that right now Bobby and Sam would both be off getting laid while Dean just went home, he’d have laughed in their face. But that didn’t change the reality of it. He probably wouldn’t be so pissed about his tom-cattin’ days being over if it weren’t for the fact that no one else’s seemed to be.

Bastards.

Cas had finished up in the kitchen and came drifting out into the library. “Since no one else is home, I think I’ll just go to bed,” he announced to the room.

“What— _now?_ ” Dean couldn’t help but ask. “Dude—I know you have go to bed early like an old woman, but this is ridiculous—it’s friggin’ nine o’clock!”

Cas, who was just a few steps up the stairs, paused. And he looked back at Dean over his shoulder, his eyes big and coy, and then started back upstairs.

Dean watched him go, all the way to the top until he disappeared from view. He sat there a moment longer, and then took one last long swig of his beer, and then stood up and marched right up the stairs after him.

* * *

_Back in the present…_

Sam groaned. “Did he really just—just ask you to _have sex_ with me?”

“Yep,” said Amy cheerfully, clearly relishing his humiliation. “And he warned me that you can be a bit of an animal in the sack, too, just in case that was a turn off.”

“Oh my _God_!” he yelled, grinding his hands into his eyes.

He felt Amy shifting around so she could rest her arms on his chest and look down at him. “How, exactly, does he know that, anyway?” she asked interestedly.

Sam gave her a baleful look from beneath his hands, and she just snorted before settling back down on his chest. “I don’t see what you have to complain about, though,” she continued.

Sam made a rude noise and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Oh, yeah? So you don’t see how _humiliating_ it is to be set up by—by _Cas_?” he asked. “The only guy more clueless than Cas is _Dean_!”

“I dunno,” Amy mused. “I seem to recall a big lummox who waited until I made the first move because he was being all noble about his job or some BS. That was pretty dumb.”

Sam grumpily pushed her off of him in retaliation, crossing his arms and rolling over with his back to her. He heard her snickering, and then she was all up against his back, the soft press of her boobs distracting him from his irritation. “Oh, come on—I’d say things worked out in the end, Cas or no Cas,” she wheedled.

Sam refused to allow himself to contemplate the soft flesh against his back. “No—Cas is what _ruins_ it—because he only did it to get me out of the house so _he_ could get laid!” he groused.

Amy, who had been idly stroking the sprinkling of gray hairs at his temple, paused. “Wait— _Cas?_ ” she asked in surprise. She grabbed his shoulder and tugged at it until he rolled back towards her a little. “ _Cas_ was trying to get laid?” Sam didn’t answer, but his disgusted expression seemed to be affirmative enough. “Man—I’ve been watching him come in my bar for over ten years—I wouldn’t have thought the little guy had it in him,” she mused

“You have _no_ idea,” Sam said sourly.

Amy whistled. “Damn. I guess it is always the ones you least expect.” She looked sideways down at him. “Well, then—I have to ask: a guy like that—what _is_ his thing, anyway? I’ve never seen him come in with anyone—he hardly talks at all when he does come in, except to set up games. And he’s hanging out in my place, not The Scarlet Pimpernel downtown—but he never seems interested in any girls who’ve tried to flirt with him, either. What’s his deal?”

Sam fidgeted slightly, casting around for something to say—or something he shouldn’t say—but then he looked up at Amy’s earnest brown eyes and he abruptly sat up. “Okay—Amy, what I’m about to say never leaves his room,” he said.

She’d sat up when he did, and now her eyes widened slightly, betraying her surprise. “Okay—no problem,” she said.

“In fact, you should just pretend you never heard it,” he warned. “You don’t talk about it, you don’t mention it—you pretend the idea never even crossed your mind. _Ever._ ”

“Cross my heart,” she said eagerly.

“I’m serious,” he stressed.

She looked indignant. “So am I,” she retorted. “I’m a bartender, for God’s sake—I’ve heard just about everything. And I know how to keep a secret.”

“I know you do,” Sam conceded. “And I wouldn’t tell you if you didn’t. All right, then.” He took a deep breath and blew it out of his nose. “Cas’s ‘deal’ is…my brother.”

For a moment, Amy just blinked at him. But then her eyes went perfectly round and her mouth dropped open. “ _Dean?_ ” she gasped.

Sam’s mouth twisted and he nodded.

“Cas—and _Dean_?” she repeated in disbelief. “Your _brother_ Dean?”

Sam just kept nodding, waiting for her to get it all out.

“Your brother Dean is—with _Cas_?” She stared up at Sam, like she was looking for some sign that he was pulling her leg; when none was forthcoming, she just slumped down where she sat. “I’ll be damned,” she breathed. “I—I’d never have thought _that_.” She looked up at Sam. “So—what? Is Dean bi, or is all that flirting with anything with tits just for show?” Her eyes widened again with sudden realization. “Oh my God—he’s not out of the closet yet, is he?”

Sam shook his head. “No, it’s not that, it’s…..complicated,” he finally said.

Amy raised one eyebrow. “You’re gonna have to do better than that,” she informed him.

Sam rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Well, okay. No, Dean’s not out of the closet—because he’s straight.” At Amy’s skeptical expression, he added, “Cas just…doesn’t count, I guess. He’s an exception.”

“Where I come from, we call that bisexual,” she said dryly.

Sam snorted. “Yeah, I know—but Dean doesn’t see it that way. He—he really is straight. Has been his whole life, and still thinks of himself that way. He was just as shocked and confused as we were when he and Cas got together. Maybe even more so,” he added. “It’s just—well, he and Cas have been through some serious shit together. Like, job-related serious shit,” he said meaningfully. “That changes a person. So…yeah. Dean is straight, and Cas is… _was_ pretty much _nothing_ —asexual, I guess, but I still don’t really know—but they just…happened.”

Amy had been quiet while he spoke, and when he finished, he looked at her to find her regarding him with furrowed eyebrows. “So—you’re telling me that somehow a straight man and an asexual man just…accidentally got together?”

Sam chuckled once. “It sounds pretty ridiculous when you put it that way,” he conceded. “But yeah. They’re together—and have been for fifteen years.”

Amy’s mouth dropped open a little again. “Wow,” she said. “That’s...that’s so _sweet_.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, it kinda is,” he admitted. But then he went serious again. “But I mean it, Amy—not a word. You can call him closeted if you want, or whatever, but you can’t say a _word_. Dean still considers himself straight, even if he is with Cas, and you’ve seen him—all machismo and testosterone and crap. If anybody even _implies_ anything—even as a _joke_ —he completely loses it. So we don’t talk about it. Ever. We all just pretend nothing is going on—including Dean—and everybody’s happy.”

Amy frowned. “That doesn’t seem very fair to poor Cas,” she protested. “Or is he the same way?”

Sam shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’s fair to him either,” he agreed. “And Bobby and I have had to sort them out a few times because of that very issue. But I’m not gonna force it—aside from one or two fights, Cas seems perfectly happy with the way things are, so I guess it’s none of my business.”

“That is still pretty crazy,” Amy replied. She looked up at him. “Honestly, though, you probably didn’t need to warn me—I never would have noticed.”

Sam grimaced. “Oh, trust me. You’re around ‘em enough, and you’ll notice,” he said. Then he smirked. “You may not be aware, but the fact is that Dean is a _huge_ sap. Sometimes, after he and Cas get back from a job they work alone together—which is pretty much a _date_ for them—he’s damn near _cooing_ over him.”

Amy sniggered. “I’m having trouble imagining that,” she said. “So, Dean sits there and makes eyes at Cas,” she said, batting her own lashes up at Sam, “but still pretends like nothing is going on?”

Sam nodded, simpering back at her like Dean at his worst, and then reminded her that, “Bobby did say I was the smart one.”

Amy fell back on her pillows, giggling. Sam looked down at her, her long dark hair spread on the sheet behind her, her eyes crinkled with laughter, and the sheet pooled at her waist, and he leaned down, smiling, and found her lips with his own.

That more or less distracted them from the topic for a while; a few minutes of slow kisses and wandering hands passed, before Sam rolled over on his back again, and Amy resumed her position lying on his chest. Sam just laid there, happy and content, until the rest of Bobby’s conversation came back to him. “So,” he said slowly, running one hand up and down the smooth skin of her back. “I guess it’s good that I did warn you anyway…because…” He trailed off, not sure how to go on, and Amy rolled over again, propping her chin up on her folded hands so she could look expectantly at him. Sam sighed and scratched his head. “Jody’s coming over tonight and bringing dinner,” he said. “We five just sit around and eat some nights when we’re all in town and…well, Bobby’s been saying that you could come, too, so…do you want to come?”

Amy gave him a sideway look. “Aw—are you inviting me back home to meet the family?”

Sam blew out a breath, but then couldn’t help but grin. “No—I’m inviting you to come join the family.”

Amy’s eyes shone, and she leaned down, clearly meaning to kiss him, and he raised up to meet her. But she stopped just short, her lips hovering over his. “I’ll have to thank Cas,” she murmured. “You were a suitable mate after all.”

Sam just laughed and pulled her down on top of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We know that, with all the fics from Dean’s POV, many of you have expressed your pity for poor, picked-upon Cas, just taking all that abuse at his hands. Well, don’t worry—Dean’s an idiot, and Cas was an _angel_ —which by SPN-verse means he was a lying, scheming, manipulative snake, and we’ve seen him be just that in canon. Despite the fact that he can’t lie to anyone’s face, he can manipulate and deceive and lie by omission with the best of the Heavenly Host. And once an angel, always an angel—we assure you that he’s hasn’t been just lying passively around and letting Dean walk all over him. Once he got over his initial period of angst over his bad Purgatory trip, he picked up more than one of his old angelic habits, from matchmaking to conning the silly little humans around him into giving him his way. Dean has just been too dumb to see it. 
> 
> As for Cas’s information about Sam’s sex habits, that’s just a relic from his angel-days, when he spent his time doing nothing but watch the Winchesters as ordered in preparation for the coming Apocalypse; they have no secrets from him (and we are also proud to say that we wrote this fic before the airing of Episode 8.21—we were right about Cas’s matter-of-fact approach to matchmaking).
> 
> And yes, if anyone noticed, giving Sam a wiseass girlfriend with a classic car who stayed in the family business while her smart little brother ran off to college was in fact a nod to the other popular subtextual slash ship in the SPN fandom. ;o)


	3. Field Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another Amy fic, wherein Sam gets laid, Cas gets naked, Dean gets an eyeful, and Amy gets a little bonding time with her very odd brother-in-law.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, after Dean having serious PTSD issues and both of the boys having little jealous fits, it’s time for another light-hearted piece, a little bonus Amy fic that takes place in the interim between the events of "[No One Like You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1349458/chapters/2815282)" and "[You Give Love a Bad Name](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1360093/chapters/2840350)." However, any Amy fic is really just a Cas fic as told by Amy, and in this one we get to see that he’s still the same goofy little angel he always was, and get a little insight on how he feels about his relationship with Dean.
> 
> This was originally a comedic piece intended to be an aside in “On the Road Again,” just one of the “Cas is a dork” fics that you always seem to enjoy, but it got so long that we just decided to make it its own chapter here with the rest of the Amy-series.
> 
> Mrs. Hyde

_November 2027_

It was a ridiculous idea from the start. But Sam hadn’t seen Amy for two months, and wouldn’t have seen her for at least another two more if it hadn’t been for the fact that Sioux Falls was literally right on their way to their next job and a perfect place to stop for the night. Ridiculous it may have been, but he was already primed to listen, and Amy had a way of making him go against his better judgment.

But really, when he was on the couch with his shorts down around his thighs and she was on her knees in front of him and going back and forth between making her plans and sucking him off, he was in no position to argue.

Sam and Dean had swung into town in the middle of the night. They’d just finished up a job in Michigan—the upper peninsula, one of the few places they’d actually never been before. They had both been vaguely pleased to have forged into new territory, despite the fact that it was mostly lame, just trees and old mines, but there was some pretty scenery, even it if was still gray and wet from the last vestiges of winter, and Dean made time to hit a few of the Indian casinos. But before they’d even managed to put down the lone vampire that they’d been following as it circled through a series of national parks to eat the tourists, they’d gotten wind of a possible new case out in San Diego, and they had rather wearily agreed to hit it once they’d wrapped things up.

There had been a mutual unspoken agreement that they would spend the night in Sioux Falls. Dean didn’t say anything about anything, just obligingly dropped Sam off at Amy’s place without being prompted, and told him he’d call him in the morning—late morning—from Bobby’s and they’d think about when they’d leave.

Sam had agreed and after getting his bags out of the back, had let himself in with the key that Amy had given him. The house was dark; the bar was closed, and he knew Amy tended to just fall into bed after her shift, so Sam kept quiet once he was inside, going into her room and putting his bag down by the door. Sure enough, she was sprawled out across the bed under the blankets. Her mouth was hanging open, a line of drool running down her cheek, and she was wearing decidedly unsexy flannels, but at that moment Sam didn’t think he’d seen anything so perfect. He’d stripped down to his shorts and T-shirt and slid right into bed with her; she didn’t move, not even when he curled himself around her and nudged her a little so he could get an arm around her middle and press against her soft backside. The bed was warm, and Sam didn’t remember dropping off to sleep.

The next morning he woke up to find Amy sitting propped up on her elbow, looking at him with a fond expression.

“Hey,” he grunted.

“Hey yourself,” she answered, her eyes crinkling a little at the corners. “You always go around sneaking into unsuspecting girls’ beds in the middle of the night?”

“Yep,” he said, sliding one hand under her shirt, playing along the smooth curve of her waist before slipping back down under the waistband of her pants to cup her ass. “Love it.”

The tiny smile that had been playing around the corner of her mouth widened a little. “And what do I get out of it?” she wanted to know.

He showed her.

After spending a good hour or so in bed and another thirty minutes playfully washing each other in the shower, they made their ways out into the kitchen. Amy always had good fresh fruit and yogurt in the house, and she made her own granola (that didn’t mean she didn’t call Sam a pussy for not also having some eggs and bacon to go with it like she did), so they had a leisurely late breakfast, split the washing-up duty, and then they settled down on the couch for a dozy cuddle.

“How long are you here for?” Amy broke the silence with her usual question.

The arm Sam had around her shoulder tightened. “Probably just the day,” he answered heavily, and Amy made a noise of dissatisfaction against his chest. “Already have another job lined up; you were just on the way there.”

Then he jerked, swearing in surprise when Amy bit his nipple through his shirt, making her displeasure clear. That sort of devolved into a bit of a tussle that was as much mutual groping as anything else and that only ended when Sam pinned her.

The fight went out of her as they kissed, and then Sam sighed and moved down so he could press his cheek against her tits where her shirt had been laid open during their scuffle. “I’m sorry it’s so short,” he said, rubbing his face over the soft flesh beneath him.

Amy _hmmed_ , her fingers combing through his hair. “Yeah, me too.”

Sam’s lips found a nipple, and he busied himself with that for a while, before settling back down, perfectly pillowed against her breastbone. The silence stretched out for a while, and Sam felt his eyelids getting heavy when Amy spoke again. “Where are you headed?”

“San Diego,” Sam murmured, half-asleep.

“Why don’t I go with you?”

That got his attention. He looked up at her incredulously. “With me?” he repeated in disbelief. “On a hunt?”

“Not for the hunt part, butthead” she answered. “I mean, just to San Diego. I have some vacation stocked up—you and your brother do your business, and then afterwards we could spend some time together.”

Sam sat up, moving to the end of the couch, his mouth twisting. Amy stayed sprawled where she was, her brow furrowed. “You can’t, Amy,” he said. “It’s—it’s work. I won’t be able to do my job if you’re there and I’m worrying—”

“So I won’t be there.” She sat up, curling her legs under her as she looked at him, which gave her the attitude of a little girl hoping for a treat—or rather, it would have, if her boobs weren’t still hanging out of her pajamas. “Vacation, remember? You guys can drop me off in the city and I’ll do all those touristy things that tourists do, and I won’t be in your way at all.”

Sam shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “I know I haven’t been home much lately, but…I’ll talk to Dean, we’ll see about taking a break soon. I know he’d want to see Cas, and we can come back and stay for a week or so, and you can take your vacation then and we can—”

“Vacation, Sam,” she interrupted him. “Vay-cay-shun. If I’m gonna take time off, I don’t want to spend it here, cold and wet and in fucking Sioux Falls.” She flung a careless hand out to encompass the room and everything beyond. “I want to go somewhere warm and sunny, preferably with a beach.” She licked her lips. “I want a change of scenery the next time I spend a week screwing your brains out.”

Sam didn’t have an answer to that right away. Amy, sensing weakness, cozied up to him. “Come on, Sam,” she coaxed. “You guys will just be my ride out to the coast—you’ll ditch me, and it’ll be like I’m not even there while you’re working. And then, when you’re done, you can come back to my hotel—” she pressed her breasts against his arm, “we’ll sit on the balcony and order room service—” she leaned up to nibble on his ear, “eat chocolate-covered strawberries and drink champagne—” her voice dropped to a husky murmur, “and I’ll let you tie me to the bed and rub me down with baby oil and fuck my tits.”

An involuntary noise escaped him, and he grabbed her and dragged her up for a furious kiss. He would be lying if he didn’t admit that he was half-hoping to distract her from her object, but Amy wasn’t stupid, and she knew that she hadn’t gotten an agreement out of him. She broke it off to pull away. “So?” she prompted.

Sam dragged his hands down his face, moving to lean his elbows on his knees. “I—I don’t know, Amy,” he said. “I—I don’t like the idea of you being close to that—to what I do. I’d still worry. And then there’s Dean—he’d be there, too, and I’d just be ditching him, and believe me when I say that he can get into all kinds of trouble on his own, so even if the job was done I couldn’t relax anyway—”

“Well, then how about this?” Amy interrupted. “Why don’t we bring Cas too?” Sam blinked at her. “Hell, even Jody and Bobby, if they’d go for it,” she mused with a snort. “Just make it a couple’s party. Anyways,” she went on, “you and Dean can go do your thing, and Cas and I can spend the time in the city. He’s in on your Boy Scout’s club and can look out for me so you won’t have to worry, and I’d enjoy the company—and he is practically my brother-in-law,” she added. “We can entertain ourselves, and then when your gig is up, we can sorta switch partners. You can come spend the rest of the time with me, and we’ll send Dean off with Cas—you said he’d like to have some time off with him too.”

Sam felt himself weakening, and he hated it, even though the idea she was outlining sounded wonderful.

Amy could tell she was winning. “Come on, Sam,” she wheedled, sliding down to the floor so she could kneel in front of him between his knees and press in close to his chest, wrapping her arms around his middle and pushing her forehead against his. “Dean always gets to go off on long road trip dates with Cas—why can’t you have one with me?”

“I—maybe I could—ask Dean what he thought,” he finally said haltingly.

The grin that split her face was dazzling—and infuriatingly triumphant. “It’ll be great,” she declared. “You wait and see—you won’t regret it, Sam.”

“I already am,” he said flatly, pissed off at how easily she played him.

One eyebrow rose. “Oh?” she asked, and a tiny alarm bell sounded in his head as her hands began to move, down his back and on to slide under the waistband of his shorts. “Well, let’s see if I can’t improve your outlook, shall we?”

He’d already lost this battle—if she wanted to pull down his shorts, why shouldn’t he let her have her way there too?

* * *

_A week later…_

Life was good.

No, really—Amy hadn’t had herself a real vacation in years. Yeah, there was the annual family reunion in Niagara Falls, but that was the point: she did it every year, and she saw the same things and the same people over and over. It didn’t even count anymore. But she could never plan ahead for a real vacation because Sam’s schedule was so awful—she never knew when he’d show up, and wouldn’t that just be a pisser if she went haring off to go skiing or something only to miss one of his stops in town and wind up not seeing him for six months straight.

But this—this was great. Here she was, strolling down a sunny beach, the Pacific bright and blue on the horizon, ready to soak up some sun, and with a cabana boy by her side, no less.

A cabana boy who was not Sam—not that he’d ever let her call him such a thing. Probably better that she was here with Cas.

He was wandering along next to her in the goofy Hawaiian shirt and baggy trunks she’d gotten him, his flip-flops slapping against the soles of his feet as he shuffled through the sand. They’d been all out and about town for the past three days—today, they were just gonna relax.

* * *

It turned out that for all of Sam’s misgivings, Dean was actually totally cool with her coming along and turning the after-hunt party into a little vacation. Amy rather amusedly wondered if Sam’s reluctance over the arrangement was simply born of not wanting to deal with Dean’s relentless teasing about just what the two of them were planning to get up to on their little vacation.

It was an enormous struggle not to fire back with her own speculation about what Dean and Cas would be doing, but she knew that simply Wasn’t Done. Didn’t mean it wasn’t still stupid, but she behaved herself—for Sam’s sake as much as anything—and bit her tongue and argued with Dean about classic rock rather than bringing Cas into the conversation.

Cas had spent the majority of the trip quietly looking out the window, hardly contributing anything to the conversation unless spoken to first. It was along the two-day trip that Amy decided that having Cas as her company while waiting for Sam was honestly just a good idea. It was just gonna be the two of them; Bobby and Jody had bowed out of their little excursion—Jody couldn’t get any time off, and Bobby flatly said that he was too old for that shit and that just having Cas out of the house and out of his hair would be all the vacation he would need. So the four of them had piled into Dean’s car and headed for the coast.

Amy knew Dean well enough to rag on him during the drive west (and half the time ganged up on Sam with him) but Cas was quiet—as he always was. The truth of the matter was that despite being with Sam for nearly five years—to the point of pretty well considering it a permanent arrangement—and being officially part of their little ragtag family, she really didn’t know Cas all that well. She knew his drinking habits and preferences, knew he had a thing for fruit juice, knew he played a wicked hand of poker, and knew that he and Dean were married for all practical purposes but that nobody was allowed to talk about it. And that was about it. So in between smacking Dean for using the rearview mirror to look at her cleavage and leaning up to nibble Sam’s ear and whisper all the plans she had for his sweet little ass once his hunt was over, she decided that she’d spend her time with Cas getting to know him properly.

That proved easier said than done. Cas really never seemed to have much to say—even after all this time, she was pretty sure that the most he’d ever spoken to her was the night he set her up with Sam.

Amy had booked a room at a nice Marriott—she knew the kind of dives Sam and Dean took, and she had no interest in spending her vacation in some fleabag that charged by the hour. Once they rolled into San Diego, Dean had just dropped the two of them off at the hotel. Amy sent them off with an admonition to kick some monster ass, and then she and Cas went to check in.

She’d requested a single room, but one with a couch for Cas (not that she had any particular problem with sharing sheets with a gay-or-asexual-or-whatever guy—she’d done it before, actually—but somehow she didn’t think Sam would appreciate it). Once they were all settled in and unpacked, she wanted to know what they were gonna do for their time in town.

“Okay, Cas—what would you like to do?”

Cas stared at her. “Now?” he asked.

Amy looked at him, and gave a bit of a laugh. “No—I mean, what are we gonna do on our little vacation?”

“I am going to watch over you,” Cas said very seriously.

Amy blinked. “Right…so, what do you want to do while you do that? For fun, you know? We’re on vacation,” she reminded him.

“I’ve never had a vacation,” Cas said simply.

“What do you call the trips you take with Dean, then?” she’d wanted to know.

Cas’s expression turned slightly guarded. “They are jobs, of course. We hunt supernatural creatures.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but then you go out and do stuff afterwards—Sam told me.” At Cas’s continued look of leery false innocence, she raised her eyebrows and said, “You and Dean?”

Cas briefly took on the look of a rather stoic rabbit in a snare, but then seemed to relax when she assured him that, “Don’t worry, I know not to say anything to Dean about you two being together. So, anyway,” she continued, “what about all the times that you and Dean take a little time off to check out wherever you are?”

Cas furrowed his brows. “That is only if we are in a convenient location—I don’t think that is a real vacation.”

Amy rubbed her forehead. “There isn’t a formal definition of a vacation, Cas,” she said patiently. “It’s just time spent relaxing and enjoying yourself and sometimes doing something fun.” Cas didn’t answer, just nodded while looking serious, so Amy prompted, “So, what do you and Dean do on your trips, after you’ve killed whatever monster you’re after?

“We go out for a meal and then go back to our motel and have sex.”

Amy nearly choked, and then just stared at him, her mouth hanging open. “Uh, okay,” she said, after swallowing and finally finding her voice again, “I figured that much, Cas…but is that all? Don’t you—don’t you go places?”

“Yes, sometimes,” Cas conceded—and didn’t say anything else.

It was like pulling teeth, but Amy eventually managed to extract some details beyond food and sex—Cas didn’t seem to see any connection, but from the list of places Cas and Dean had gone, it looked like they favored side trips of the “natural wonder” variety. Not too much call for that in the middle of a big city, but it was San Diego—she had no problems visiting a world-renowned zoo. She could put off hitting the art museum until Sam was with her. Cas seemed quite amenable to the idea of going to the San Diego Zoo, and so they agreed to get up early in the morning and go.

They got up early, but they didn’t quite _leave_ early; Amy learned quickly that letting Cas shower first was a very bad idea. He spent so long in there that she fell asleep again and was awakened an hour later by Cas, standing over her in just his shorts, his hair all wet and spiky. But despite leaving a bit later than intended, they got to the zoo only an hour after the gates opened.

It was pretty spectacular—100 acres with over 650 exotic animals. She’d been a bit concerned at first, because she honestly couldn’t tell if Cas was enjoying himself or not. His expression never seemed to change, was always just that intense, serious look as he collected brochures and read exhibit placards and stared at all the animals. She asked him several times if he was okay, if he was having fun, if he wanted to do something else, but he always said he was fine, so she eventually just gave up and let him look in silence.

They ate lunch at a picnic table, just zoo food, which was expensive but tasty, but Cas had offered to pay with his credit card (which she suspected was one of the illegal variety that Sam favored on the job). She returned the favor and assuaged her mildly reproving conscience by (legitimately) buying dessert, a Lemon Chill for Cas and a messy chocolate dip cone for herself.

It was the damndest thing during lunch, though—Amy had a hamburger and fries, and while she was eating had been amusing herself by flicking bits of fry or pieces of her bun down to the sparrows that were lurking around the periphery. Birds that haunted outdoor restaurants were always nervy, and so would come up quite close to the table to gobble up the bits she tossed them.

Cas seemed just as engrossed watching the pests as he was the wild animals. “You never feed the birds?” she asked.

“Only bird seed from the feeders in my garden,” Cas said solemnly, and took a bite of his grilled cheese.

Amy smiled. “I always would—there was this sort of drive-in spot out west of Sioux Falls—it’s closed now, but Dad and I use to go there all the time when I was a kid. It was our special thing; no matter how cold or wet or hot it was, we’d always go out for a big mess of chili cheese fries and root beer floats, and we’d sit in the car and throw fries to the birds while we ate.” She punctuated her statement by tossing a bit of fry to a passing starling, which it ate with all speed. “Go ahead,” she said, gesturing. “Birds around places like this know not to be scared of us—they’ll get pretty close.”

Cas had listened to her story with that same serious look on her face, as if she’d been giving him all the secrets of the universe, but then he nodded and tore off a small piece of bread. He looked away, then, and there was a sparrow by the little brick wall next to their table. He spotted it, and then stood up and strode right at it.

“What—Cas, no, you don’t—” But Amy didn’t get to tell him to just throw it over there, because by then he had walked right up to the bird, crouched down, held out the bread—and the bird just took it.

Amy gawped, and then laughed. “Oh—well—I guess they’re tamer than I thought,” she said in surprise…only when she scooted over to that end of the table, the bird flew off immediately.

Cas watched it go, utterly unconcerned, but then stood up and came back to the table and sat down to finish his lunch.

Amy just stared at him; Cas didn’t seem to notice. “Well,” she finally managed, “guess you’re the Bird Whisperer then, huh?”

Cas furrowed his brow. “I didn’t whisper to it,” he said.

Cas was really, really weird.

“I know, Cas,” she said, and patted his arm. Best to just let him be weird, she figured. “I should take you to the petting zoo, then,” she said laughingly, changing the subject. “Just let you play with all those animals, since you’re so good with them.”

Cas hadn’t understood, so she explained to him what the petting zoo was—for God’s sake, had this guy been living under a rock his whole life?—and turned out that he thought her joke was a fine idea and very much wanted to go pet the animals.

So after dessert, Amy found herself wandering around the petting zoo, the only person not accompanying a kid. Or maybe she was—just a very large one. Cas didn’t look any happier than he had all day, but he’d waded right into the middle of the animal pens and proceeded to sit down and just let them wander all over him.

And they had, was the weirdest part. Yeah, they were all domesticated, sheep and goats and a llama and that sort of thing, but they were only interested in the kids because of the handfuls of feed they had. And the animals like the ducks didn’t like getting close to them at all.

Seemed Cas was exempt from that. The animals didn’t seem fussed by him at all. They weren’t flocking to him or anything, but they didn’t only seem to be near him for food. The ducks weren’t perturbed by him either, trundling right by him like he wasn’t even there and ignoring him when he would stroke their backs. And at one point, Amy even saw one of the sheep sit right down next to him as if he was a rock.

“Well, you’re a regular Dr. Doolittle, aren’t you?” she had called, leaning on the fence to the enclosure. Cas had very seriously told her that he wasn’t a doctor. By that point, he was starting to get some funny looks from some of the parents, so she suggested that they should leave and check out the rest of the park. Cas obediently stood up; the animals around him didn’t react, not even to move out of his way has he strode out of the pen.

Seriously—weird.

And not only was Cas weird, she found, but he was also a huge nerd. The few times he did talk during their long walk through the exhibits, it was to point out an error in the placards or to tell her some bit of evolutionary history about the animal they were looking at at the time. Honestly, the more she talked to him, the less she could figure out how on earth he and _Dean_ of all people had managed to get together at all, much less stay together for fifteen years.

By the end of the day, they hadn’t managed to make the whole tour of the park. But after spending so much time with the little guy, Amy was starting to see what Sam had always said: that once you knew Cas, you’d realize that he wasn’t nearly as impassive as he first seemed. The slight pursing of his lips, the tiny furrow in his eyebrows, the way his eyes turned down at the corners just a little—she could see that he was disappointed that they didn’t get to see all of it.

This was supposed to be his vacation, too—and with the weather so gorgeous, why not spend it outside? And sure enough, when she suggested that they come back tomorrow—right when the zoo opened this time—so that they could pick up the last part that they didn’t see, she spotted the tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth and the lifting of his eyes that told her that he wanted to.

So they left when the park closed—Amy had wheedled Cas into getting a zoo T-shirt to remember the trip—and when she managed to wrangle out of him that he liked ethnic food, she looked up an Indian place with good reviews and they went and stuffed themselves on samosas and naan and mango lassi.

The next day, Amy made sure to get them up an hour earlier and to take her shower first, so they managed to hit the zoo right at nine a.m. They finished their tour after lunch (Amy had made Cas feed the birds again to see if his luck with the one yesterday was just a fluke—it wasn’t. They were perfectly happy to jump right into his hand and eat, only to scatter the minute she got close), and since they still had a good portion of the day left, she suggested that maybe they could go spend the rest of the afternoon at the Birch Aquarium—and it was right on the beach, so the view should be great, too.

Cas approved, so they hopped a taxi and sped out to La Jolla, to mingle with the beautiful people and check out the fish.

Amy thought that she could get used to this—the sun, the ocean, and plenty of man-candy for her ogle. And Cas didn’t seem to mind stopping and lingering on the sidewalks to sightsee (he was more interested in the ocean views than the surfer views). Still, the aquarium was fun; Cas bought himself a small dried starfish preserved in acrylic, and with only a little prompting from Amy, went ahead and got a pair of swim trunks with little octopi all over them. She’d found out that he didn’t have a bathing suit with him, but she intended to go to the beach so he’d need it. Afterwards, they went and found a good sushi restaurant—not some fakey hibachi type place, but the real deal—and spent dinner trying out all the different kinds (Cas liked the pickled ginger but avoided the wasabi like the plague), and then took a long walk along the sidewalks and out onto a pier to watch the sunset over the ocean, although Cas seemed just as fascinated by the pelicans and seals that were further up the beach.

Back at the hotel that evening, Amy suggested that they try out Cas’s new swim trunks down at the hotel pool. Cas had been dubious—turned out he couldn’t swim—but Amy wheedled him down, saying he could sit in the shallows and be fine.

He went along with her in the end, but things almost went sour when they arrived. The pool was heated, so Amy just jumped right in. She surfaced just in time to see Cas dip a tentative toe in the water and then jerk it out, looking up at her with a betrayed expression.

“What?” she called. 

“You said this water was heated,” he said accusingly.

“…Yeah, and it is,” she replied, slicking her hair back out of her face.

“It is not,” Cas retorted. “It’s freezing.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “Okay, so try out the hot tub—it’s definitely warm.”

Cas cautiously approached the hot tub, his expression wary. After being assured that the roiling water was not actually boiling, he tested the water—and then was in it so fast that he practically teleported.

And he stayed there the whole time, just sitting contentedly in the water up to his chin, his hair limp and his face flushed. Amy joined him once, but nothing she said could get him into the pool. Eventually it was late, so she blasted him out of the water. That was a bit of an ordeal; he got a mulish expression and he insisted that it wasn’t that late and the pool didn’t close for another half an hour so he didn’t have to leave yet. Patiently, Amy told him, “Sweetie, it’s not always a good idea to stay in the hot water for that long—you’ll get overheated,” and he finally climbed out to follow her up to bed. She didn’t know which was weirder: that she found herself talking to Cas like he was five years old, or the fact that he didn’t seem to object to it. 

After two days all for Cas, the next morning Amy declared that it was her turn and that they were going to go shopping. Cas agreed docilely enough and trailed along after her as she spent the day flitting from one shop to the next. Amy had lost a few pounds in the past month and was looking to spruce up her wardrobe. She had an admitted weakness for cute shoes, and since she was here, she wanted a hot new bathing suit—she was going to get Sam to the beach if it killed her.

While not necessarily a helpful companion, offering no opinions on anything, Cas at least wasn’t a hindrance. Amy had no doubt that Sam or Dean would be as much of a nightmare as any man when dragged out to go clothes shopping, but Cas was content to go wherever Amy took him, from shoe stores to deep into the lingerie department, studiously examining all the clothes with the same intensity he’d had looking at the animals at the zoo. All the same, she made sure to thank him for his patience by letting him pick lunch and trying to hit a few stores that weren’t just clothiers. He seemed particularly interested in a place that specialized in all kinds of natural bath and body products and came out of there with a big sack of organic herbal soaps (her eyebrows raised when he informed her that half of them were presents for Bobby).

She may have already had her old one-piece bathing suit with her, but she found herself a sexy new bikini that wasn’t too much for a woman her age but still let her strut her stuff. She told Cas that they should go to the beach tomorrow to soak up some rays so she could try it out. Cas seemed to like the idea of sunning, at least, so he bought some additional beach ware along with her.

That afternoon, Amy made a killing, finding an absolutely fabulous red dress that would go perfectly with a pair of shoes that she’d adored but hadn’t otherwise had justification to buy. Sam loved her in red, and it would be perfect if she managed to get him to take her out on the town. Right when she was getting ready to take it up to the cashier, her eyes fell on Cas, who was placidly munching on the bag of sweet curried pecans that she’d bought him from a street vendor a few blocks away.

“Say, Cas—you have any evening clothes with you?” When he said he did not, Amy said, “Well, I wanna take this dress out for a test drive—how about we get you some nice clothes and you and I can go out on a date on the town tonight?”

Cas suddenly looked rather spooked. “Amy—I can’t—we can’t date, I—I’m with Dean—”

Amy was torn between rolling her eyes and just bursting out laughing. “It’s just a figure of speech, sweetie,” she said gently. “I know you’re with Dean—and I’m with Sam, anyway. A date can just be as friends—I just meant that you and I should go out somewhere nice tonight for the fun of it.”

Cas relaxed noticeably upon realizing that she was not trying to pick him up, and so after she got her dress and backtracked to get her shoes, she dragged him to a men’s clothing store. Cas got a full workup, from a pair of silk boxers that he found very intriguing, black socks with garters because Amy said they were sexy, a black suit and tie, a deep blue shirt and matching handkerchief to bring out his eyes, and shiny black shoes. She even talked him into buying some cologne, even though he was dubious. She finally pointed out that even Dean wore body spray, which was pretty much the same thing, so he gave in.

That night found them at an upscale Italian place. Cas looked quite dapper in his new suit; he’d shaved, and Amy had even helped him spike his hair up with a little gel, rather than letting him run around with his usual scruffy, rumpled bedhead look. She definitely approved of getting him into something decent for a change—the 1990’s look of jeans, boots, and flannel was about as fashion-forward as her four happy little hunters ever got, but here was proof that they cleaned up nicely. Amy herself felt like a million bucks—the dress was a dream and the shoes were perfect. She was gonna knock Sam’s socks off with this outfit—to say nothing of the little scraps of red satin and lace that she was wearing beneath it.

Cas still wasn’t the best company, preferring to concentrate on his dinner rather than talk much, but Amy could at least enjoy the food and the occasional speculative look she got from male patrons (and a few jealous ones from men and women alike). Despite the fact that it was decidedly not a real date and that Cas had all the social skills of a banana, he surprised her by paying for the meal. Amy wasn’t quite ready to head back to the hotel after dinner, so she informed Cas that they were going to find themselves a nightclub. “It’s criminal to waste this,” she said, gesturing to both of them.

Cas was confused by this, but went gamely along to the club she found. It wasn’t some wild place that catered to the college set, but it wasn’t stodgy either, with a DJ and a dance floor and loud thumping music. They found a table near a wall and Amy asked Cas what he’d like to drink, and objected when he just asked for his usual one beer. “Come on, Cas—we’re on vacation. You can live a little, you know,” she said.

Cas shook his head. “I’m not supposed to get intoxicated,” he said firmly. “It makes Dean very angry when I drink too much.”

Amy frowned. “Well, how about this,” she said. “First off, you’re not gonna get drunk just from a drink or two. And secondly, I am a bartender, you know—I can keep an eye on you and cut you off before you get wasted. And lastly, Dean’s not here, and even if he was, a drink or two is not ‘too much’.” She looked beadily at Cas, who didn’t appear convinced. “Here,” she said, standing up. “I know just the thing you need. I’ll get you a drink—just one—and we’ll see how you handle it, okay?”

Cas nodded reluctantly, and Amy left him with her purse and made her way to the bar. She’d never seen Cas have anything other than exactly one cheap beer in her place, but she’d seen him down fruit juice like it was his job. Given Dean’s refined palate, she doubted Cas had ever had anything but convenience store crap and whatever rotgut Bobby kept at his place.

Cas looked utterly perplexed by the big hurricane glass full of blue liqueur that she set in front of him, complete with two colored straws, pineapple wedges and maraschino cherries, and a little cocktail umbrella. “A Blue Hawaiian,” she announced. “Rum and blue curacao with cream of coconut and pineapple juice.”

Cas, who had been eyeing the glass distrustfully, perked right up at the mention of the fruit juice, and took a tentative sip without any prompting—and he then immediately started sucking it down like a vacuum.

“Easy!” Amy exclaimed, yanking the glass away. “Jeez, Cas, if that’s how you drink, no wonder you get smashed easy! Take it slow—enjoy it, and it’ll keep you from getting drunk so fast.”

Even with her warning, he polished off the whole thing before she was even halfway through her vodka gimlet, including eating all the garnishes. “Lush,” she called him amusedly, and right when she finished her drink, the DJ went retro and fired up Gloria Gaynor and, well, dancing was a must.

Getting Cas on the dance floor, however, proved to be a disaster. He had all the coordination of a puppet with its strings cut and absolutely no sense of rhythm. She laughingly sent him back to the table before the song was over and told him to get another drink and sit it out. There were plenty of people on the floor to dance with, and Amy took full advantage of it.

Despite the occasional grope (and a proposition by a kid who had to be at least a decade her junior), she had a ball, but a few songs later, she regretfully decided that she’d better get back to her baby-sitting duty. Cas had wiped out his second drink and Amy figured she needed to catch up. He was still clear-eyed, but she did notice that he seemed a bit more talkative now that he had a little rum in him.

“Dean does not like this kind of music,” he informed her as he sucked on his pineapple.

Amy chuckled into her gimlet. “Yeah, I know—as far as he’s concerned, music just stopped after about 1985. Sam gets sick of always having to listen to the same songs on the road.” She looked up. “What about you?”

“Bobby sometimes plays Joni Mitchell,” he offered.

Amy almost snorted her drink up her nose. “Okay—but what about you?” she said when she could talk again. “You have anything in particular you like?”

“I like all music,” he said seriously. “I like the rhythms, and I admire the work and creativity that went into composing it.”

“You really are a dork, you know that?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he answered. “Dean says so, too.”

Amy just laughed and shook her head; she was starting to feel a bit of a buzz, and she wagered Cas was, too. But she figured one more couldn’t hurt (she’d told the bartender to go light on the booze in Cas’s), so she went up and got them another round, this time getting a Piña Colada for Cas.

“This place is pretty nice,” she said as she slid his glass across the table to him. “Maybe I can bring Sam back here when they’re done with their job.” Cas had no comment, his attention taken up by his drink; seemed he liked it even better than the Blue Hawaiian. “You know,” she continued, sipping her third gimlet (she liked to try interesting new vodkas when she could), “since you’ve got a nice outfit, maybe you and Dean could go out, too. I mean, you’re here in San Diego—nobody knows you—and it’s California, so there’s a big gay scene. I know there are bars you two could go to where nobody would say anything.”

“No.” Cas’s voice was decisive and firm enough that she looked up in surprise. “No gay bars,” he said. “I went to one once by mistake and Dean was very, very angry with me.”

Amy pursed her lips. “Look, Cas,” she said, “I know it may not be any of my business, but seriously—the way Dean treats you is not cool. You shouldn’t have to worry about making him mad if you want to go out or have a drink—and you sure as _hell_ shouldn’t be forced to keep your relationship a secret. It’s like he’s _ashamed_ of you—you know I like Dean, but I like you too, and so does Sam, and we both think that Dean’s just being a huge asshole—”

Amy stopped abruptly.

When she’d first met Cas, he only ever seemed to have one expression. Sam had assured her that with time, as she got to know him, she would see that he had just as many expressions as the next person—they were just a lot more subtle. And between the semi-regular dinners with the boys over at Bobby’s place and now spending a few days just in his company, she could see what Sam meant and was getting better at reading Cas’s usually impassive face.

But even if she’d never seen him before in her life, she’d have no trouble reading the expression on his face right now: Cas was furious.

“Dean is not an asshole,” he growled. “Sam and Bobby are always trying to tell me that Dean is somehow wrong—but _they_ are wrong. Dean is _wonderful_ —and he loves me. He has saved my life countless times, and he would give his own for me without a thought. He has forgiven the unspeakable mistakes and transgressions I’ve made in the past and made me what I am today. And he has become my lover even though he is not attracted to men. He has given up women and the sort of relationships he could have with them, no matter how hard it is for him—because he has chosen _me_.” He seemed to grow where he sat, his eyes blue-hot. “He has given up _everything_ for me—and because of that and because I love him, I would never ask for more.”

Amy stared, her mouth open. “Uh—wow, Cas,” she finally said. “I guess—I guess when you put it that way…” She trailed off, not entirely sure what to say. Cas was still pinning her in place with his stormy glare, so she tried again. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t saying Dean doesn’t love you, Cas, it’s just—well, it’s just that most people wouldn’t put up with Dean’s…quirks.”

“I am not most people,” he said flatly. “And Dean is no more flawed than any other human, and I love him just as he is, including his flaws, and I don’t want him to be anything other than what he is. I would be content to merely be in Dean’s presence—to have what we do is more than I could have ever imagined. I don’t need anything else.”

She held up her hands in defeat. “Well, all right then—if you’re happy, then I guess that’s all that matters, right? I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it—I’m sorry. Still friends?” she asked, tentatively holding out her hand.

Cas’s face relaxed into his usual placid lines. “Yes,” he said, and gave Amy’s hand a rather awkward shake.

After that little to-do, Amy decided that she needed another drink—and Cas probably did, too. She got him one more Piña and opted to switch to a gin and tonic for herself to round out the evening.

She had worried that her dressing down would cast a pall over the evening, but Cas seemed to have completely forgiven her just like that, and she was still warm and fuzzy from her drinks, so any gloom was dispelled pretty quickly. Since Cas seemed more inclined to talk, and since Amy felt like she was missing some information, having only heard about his relationship second-hand from Sam, she asked him about Dean.

And therein she found the key to loosening Cas’s tongue—and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the rum he’d been drinking. He talked and he talked and he _talked_ about Dean, and now she could recognize the starry-eyed expression he got when he did. He went on about how wonderful Dean was, and amazing, and beautiful, and thoughtful, and generous, and about his likes and dislikes, about his habits, from the way he tied his shoes to the way he always folded his straw papers instead of crumpling them to the way he always set his boots neatly aside with the socks stuffed in them when he took them off but just left his clothes in a pile wherever he dropped them.

Amy had been rather taken aback by the level of detail Cas just dumped on her (and fighting a healthy dose of skepticism—she knew Dean well enough to know that he was not the paragon that Cas was describing), but she dutifully listened, and that last bit caught her attention. She was feeling mellow and relaxed and while not exactly an inhibited girl on normal days, after four drinks she was quite full of chutzpah and didn’t even think twice about mischievously asking, “So—what about in the bedroom?”

Cas had paused, and briefly tried to tell her about the way Dean preferred the right side of the bed and tended to sleep either on his side or his stomach, but Amy interrupted and clarified, “No, Cas—I mean _in_ bed. Sex.”

And Cas told her.

He told her _everything_.

She finally managed to pull her jaw up off the floor by the time he finished detailing of all the ways and positions they liked to frot together, just in time for him to move into his exhaustive retelling of all the ways he liked to suck Dean off and how much he loved doing it. And he didn’t stop, either; he happily and shamelessly told her every single minute detail about all the dirty things he and Dean got up to.

And it was hot as _hell_.

Well, it could have been hotter if he’d stop using those ridiculous technical terms and telling her how beautiful it was, but honestly, she didn’t care about that at this point. Amy had always thought Sam was the hottest of the bunch, but she wasn’t blind to the fact that Dean and Cas were quite the lookers as well—and just the thought of them, naked and sweaty and writhing on the sheets, hot and wet and grinding in the shower, Cas on his knees in front of Dean, or Dean behind Cas while he was bent over the nearest piece of furniture was enough to have her squirming deliciously in her seat.

Getting tipsy always made her get horny, and so eventually she got so hot and bothered by Cas’s narration that she decided they’d better call it quits before she embarrassed herself. She halted Cas’s monologue in the middle of his loving description of the first time Dean ate him out, dragged him up to the bar so she could close their tab, and then headed outside for a taxi.

It was nearly midnight by the time they got back to their room. Since they were going to the beach the next day, she figured that she’d shower tonight, rather than getting all clean in the morning just to go out and get sandy and sweaty. Besides, a shower sounded like just the place for her to relieve a little…tension.

Cas, despite being slightly fuzzy-eyed, was still fidgety and chatty. He’d stripped down to his shorts as though going to bed, but didn’t seem at all inclined to sleep, instead pacing around the room and fiddling with anything that wasn’t nailed down. Well, they had cable and a big screen TV, so she set him down in front of the Discovery Channel and went to the bathroom to clean up and take care of her personal business.

When she came back out, clean and feeling very refreshed, she found that the day and the liquor had caught up with Cas—he had passed out on her bed. Amused, she went to wake him—but then just shrugged, ran an affectionate hand through his hair (he didn’t move), and then got his blankets from the couch and just covered him up where he was. He was on his own side, after all, and even though he was on top of the blankets, there was enough room for her to slip under the covers on her own side. So she just turned off the TV, got in bed, doused the lights, and went to sleep.

* * *

And that brought them to the beach.

When Amy had woken up that morning, it had taken a few minutes for her sleep-addled brain to realized that the warm, lean body spooned up against her back and the arms wrapped around her middle did not belong to Sam. She raised her head enough to look behind her and see that despite the blankets between them, Cas had just cuddled right up to her in the night. Amused, she disentangled herself and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

When she got out, she shook Cas awake; he’d drunk three virgin piña coladas last night after she decided he’d had enough liquor, and she’d made him drink a lot of water when they got home, so he was only slightly bleary-eyed. She of course could drink like a pro and felt fine, and after his hour-long shower, Cas too felt right as rain. Unsurprisingly, they’d slept late, so Amy decided that they’d skip breakfast and just pack up and head out to La Jolla to have an early lunch before hitting the beach.

Cas looked like a huge dork in his swim trunks and Hawaiian shirt—he of course didn’t notice. Amy was wearing a new sundress over her new bikini along with a big straw hat (she just barely restrained herself from getting Cas a big goofy one with the frayed brim, because she knew he’d wear it). It was a beautiful day—naturally—so Amy had the taxi drop them off a little north of the beach so they could enjoy the walk there. They wound up having lunch at a little place that promised authentic Mexican food, not Tex-Mex. It lived up to it; the savory corn pudding was fabulous, the pork tender and citrusy, and they both ate every bite (Cas had gotten quite fierce when demanded that his food have no peppers) and still had room for honey-drenched sopapillas afterwards.

Then they gathered up their things and moseyed in the direction of the beach road. Amy wasn’t planning on swimming—blue and beautiful the Pacific may be, but she had no interest in freezing her ass off. Cas seemed to agree, and they descended past the parking lot to the trailheads.

Amy had taken the trail on the right, but hadn’t gone 100 feet before stopping. “Uh-oh,” she said, standing in front of the sign in their path. “Better turn around—we don’t want to go that way. We follow that trail, we’ll wind up on the nude beach.”

Cas knitted his eyebrows. “What?”

Amy gave him a wry smile. “The nude beach, honey. Clothing optional, you know.”

Cas blinked. “You mean…people can be outside on a beach but not wear clothes?” he asked.

Honestly—had he been raised by wolves? “Yeah, Cas—that’s where nudists and such go, or just people who wear clothes normally but don’t want to when they’re at the beach,” she told him.

“And it’s not illegal? We wouldn’t be arrested for being naked outside in public?”

“Nope—it’s all nice and legal, just as long as you stay in boundaries.”

“Can we go there?”

Amy’s mouth fell open. “You…want to go to the nude beach?” she asked slowly.

“Yes—I would like to be naked.”

Amy stared at him. He was waiting for her response, and even behind his big aviator sunglasses, she could see his hopeful expression.

And she could only say, “Well…okay.”

* * *

“Right there, Dean—that parking lot.”

“This isn’t a beach, Sam—it’s a pile of rocks.”

“Yeah—we have to walk down the bluffs to get to the beach.”

“Screw that, man—call Amy back and tell them to get their butts up here.”

Sam rolled his eyes. He and Dean had finished off the last of their job today—turned out to be a fairly routine curse, actually, if a rather complicated one. Most of the time had been tracking down the materials needed to break it. This one had been pretty old, designed to strike the descendants of the original victim. The caster was already dead, nothing to worry about there, and they’d taken care of the problem early this morning. They’d both wanted a nap afterwards, and now it was getting close to dinnertime, so he’d called Amy to let her know they were done and ask if they could come pick her and Cas up.

Amy had cheerfully answered his call, quite pleased to have him already done and at her disposal (she’d made a few suggestions about what she intended to do with him that made him fidget, but he couldn’t answer properly with Dean right there). She and Cas were spending the afternoon at the beach, and she told them where they were and to come on down and get them. They weren’t, however, in a necessarily easy-access place, and now Dean was bitching about it.

Sam ignored him and got out of the car; Dean didn’t stop fussing but got out too. “Man, why didn’t they just go to that beach down south of here? It was right there off the road.”

“Probably because of Cas—you know he’d like to walk through the bluffs and look at the animals,” Sam answered as they headed down the trail.

Dean grunted something unintelligible as they picked their ways down the rocks towards the shore, where they could see the tiny shapes of sunbathers on the sand and surfers in the water. Coming to California was always a little bittersweet for Sam—he’d spent four fantastic years here, the closest he’d ever been to being normal, and here was where he’d met Jess—but it was also where she’d died, and his life had pretty much gone to shit after that. But he’d lived up further north; now he was down in San Diego, and he planned to make some new memories with Amy, and anyway, home was Sioux Falls now.

Sam didn’t mind the walk, and for all his whining, he didn’t think Dean did either. It was a given that the weather would be great, and the view was just as fine. The trail was a bit long, but eventually it emptied out onto a smooth stretch of beach backed by the Torrey Pines bluffs.

“This beach doesn’t look any different from the other one,” Dean groused. “Why the hell would—” But he suddenly forgot to gripe when two naked women walked by.

Dean had turned on the smarm, was already giving them the eye, and the girls—tanned and trim and toned, pure California beach beauties—seemed torn between amusement and flattery, but Sam was just standing stock-still with slowly dawning horror. _Oh, no._ This was—there was no other explanation—this was Black’s Beach.

The _nude_ beach.

“Well,” Dean grinned. “I’m beginning to see the attraction after all,” he said, and then went swaggering down the sand.

Sam just rubbed his forehead and followed. They were going to find Amy and get the hell out of here.

She’d told them that they weren’t far from the trailhead, by a big palm tree and near a little portable tiki bar that was set up for the beachgoers. Dean was treating the walk like his own live skin mag—he was admittedly put off by the naked dudes to be seen, but was quite happy to focus on all the girls. Sam just kept his eyes front and scanned the area for the big purple towel Amy said she was sitting on.

He found it—there she was, stretched out on her stomach near a palm tree. Sam yanked Dean in her direction, away from where he’d been starting to chat up a blonde with no top on. He looked indignant but came along anyway, and they marched right up to the spot where Amy was sunbathing.

“Amy,” Sam said in clipped tones.

Amy opened her eyes and raised her head. “Oh, hey, guys,” she said brightly. “You found me!” and she sat up, and only then did Sam realize that she too was topless.

He forced himself to ignore the incredibly Neanderthal impulse he was having to throw a towel over her and cover her up—and instead focused on the much more reasonable Neanderthal impulse to punch his brother in the face. Dean was leering down at Amy, his grin huge and sleazy and his eyes fixed below her collarbones. “Well, hel- _lo_ there,” he said to her boobs, and then looked up and gave Sam an obnoxious thumbs-up. “Nicely done, Sammy,” he said.

“Oh, I know,” Amy agreed, grinning right back at him.

“Amy, why the _hell_ did you come to Black’s Beach?” Sam demanded, fighting to keep his eyes off her swaying, well-oiled tits.

She just shrugged. “Wasn’t my idea,” she said nonchalantly. “Cas wanted to.”

Sam had the immense satisfaction of seeing the shit-eating grin fall right off Dean’s face, quickly giving way to white-faced horror. And right then, just to make it perfect, from behind them they heard a gravelly voice say, “Hello, Dean, Sam.”

And there he was, in all his naked glory. Cas was standing right behind them, much too close as usual, holding two plastic cups filled with slush, one red and the other violently blue, and he didn’t have a stitch on.

Sam squinted and looked off; Dean appeared to be slowly choking to death. “Here is your daiquiri, Amy,” he said, moving around Dean to hand her her cup, settling down unconcernedly on his towel, stretching his legs in the sun and sucking down the blue slushie in his own cup.

“So,” Amy said after a hit off her drink, “you boys gonna join us?” She waggled her eyebrows. “You don’t need your suits.”

“ _Fuck_ no!” Dean had found his voice, and with that pronouncement turned to storm back up the beach.

Cas watched him go, looking mildly concerned and upset; Amy just rolled her eyes. “I think I need to be oiled up again,” she said to Cas, and Sam’s jaw clenched.

But Cas just stood up and started hunting for his clothes. “I think Dean wants to leave,” he said, pulling his shorts on (thank God).

Amy huffed a little, but then mercifully found her bikini top and put it on. “Well, fine, then.” She looked up at Cas, who had slipped into his flipflops and was buttoning up a really awful Hawaiian shirt. “You go on and chase him down, sweetie—Sam and I will pack up here and be right behind you.” Cas nodded, slipping on a big pair of sunglasses, and started off towards the trail with his cocktail.

Sam glowered down at Amy once he was gone. “Seriously?” he asked flatly.

“What?” she demanded. “It really was Cas’s idea—I was gonna go to the public beach, but he wanted to come here. It’s his vacation too, you know.”

Sam just pursed his mouth, belatedly realizing that that would just make Amy laugh at him, which she did. “Aw, come on, don’t get the Bitch Face—we’re on vacation.” She pulled her sundress over her head, and then gave him a speculative look. “Speaking of vacation,” she said, her voice dropping as she sidled up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, “there are champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries waiting back at my room…”

And just like that, everything was fine. His hands came up grip her hips, and she gave him a slow smile. “That’s what I thought. Come on, big boy—let’s get back. It’s your turn to oil me up this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In keeping with the previous installments of this fic, we wanted to use the outside POV to hear little bit from Cas himself, just to let everyone know that he really isn’t completely being taken advantage of in his relationship with Dean. As you can see, he’s not totally oblivious; he is at least aware that their relationship isn’t exactly normal, even that it’s a little unhealthy, but on the other hand, he’s not very normal or healthy himself, and he honestly doesn’t care and is happy with the way things are.
> 
> If anyone is wondering, we’ve written Cas as being ever-so-slightly in tune with nature; in our minds, that little “speck of angel” that he’s still got is responsible. Wildlife doesn’t respond to him as a human, but rather treat him just as part of the scenery, which would have been his role as an angelic observer for most of his existence. They aren’t drawn to him, but he in no way alarms them either; he’s more or less a warm, soft rock.


	4. Quick Fix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dreams just never cut it—they were always _off_ somehow. The sensations weren’t right, the locations weren’t right, and the sounds sure as hell weren’t right.”
> 
> Dean is rudely interrupted while having a very pleasant dream about his boyfriend, and decides that that just won’t be tolerated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is “Quick Fix”. I’m sure you guys saw that “Patience” had originally closed with “Field Trip”, but the vacation portion of that fic was so popular and met with such enthusiasm we decided to continue it. Well, sort of—this fic was actually supposed to be part of “Come and Get It”. However, we decided to reformat it a little to fit in with “Patience”. That, and we decided to give you guys some porn to make sure you didn’t feel cheated out of some action. So now “Patience” has two more chapters and “Come and Get It” has one less. Unless, of course, we think up another fic idea where Dean has to have angel butt.

_The morning after “Field Trip”_

Dean had just woken up. He and Cas’d had a mutual bitchfit resulting in equally mutual Silent Treatment all day yesterday. It was seven-thirty in the morning. Dean had morning mouth.

And he didn’t give a damn. Because he was hard, and he was horny, and something really needed to be done about it.

He didn’t mind having wet dreams now and again about Cas, not really. He’d come to grips with the fact that he had ‘em a long time ago—Cas was his whatever-he-was, and they were fucking, and Dean felt…how he felt about him, so it was natural. Granted, it wasn’t so good when he had those kind of dreams when he was with Sam or something—oh, he minded _then_. But right now, he didn’t. He’d been having a dream that he’d been banging Cas like there was no tomorrow—with Cas in his old angel getup and bent over the hood of the Impala, no less, where the fuck had _that_ come from—but he’d been jolted awake by Cas’s stupid phone alarm before things had wrapped up.

That really wasn’t acceptable. He’d told Cas a long time ago that you do _not_ just _stop_ , and that rule applied to _everything_.

And, well…Cas was right over there. Dean knew for a fact that there was no way in hell he’d turn down a quick fuck, no matter how early in the morning it was—or how pissy he was about yesterday.

Cas had just managed to fumble his phone off, and was doing that curl-up thing he always did, like he was trying to hide from morning or something equally stupid. Well, Dean didn’t have time for that. Grunting, he pushed he blankets off of himself, swinging his legs out and groping around on the floor beside him for his bag.

By the time he’d gotten it unzipped and managed to get his fingers around the lube and started hunting for a condom, Cas had started to move again, rolling over a bit and grudgingly pushing his blankets down, obviously not wanting to leave the warmth of his bed. Dean shoved himself away from his bed, landing heavily on Cas’s mattress and making him jump.

“Dean?” he rasped, starting to roll towards him, blinking blearily as he did.

“Quiet,” Dean mumbled, contemplating pushing his blankets all the way down, but then deciding to pull them back up and slide under them instead—he wanted to be in the warm, too. He pushed on Cas’s shoulder, rolling him back on his side facing away, and once he was completely under the sheets with him, he bumped his hips forward, rubbing his boner on Cas’s ass.

Cas inhaled a little sharply when Dean did that, and then he exhaled in surprised (if sleepy) joy when he heard the familiar crinkle of plastic as Dean got the condom open and reached into his boxers to put it on. Dean had almost decided to skip it, because he _really_ just wanted to take care of things ASAP, but he decided he didn’t really want to deal with the mess it invariably made. Well, however he did it, he just wanted to pick right up where the dream left off, but finish up this time.

Dean pushed his shorts down off of his dick and a little bit past his hips before reaching forward to grab Cas’s hips—oh, what the hell, _now_ Cas was wearing clothes? In bed, and after yesterday, really? And—were those fucking _silk_ boxers?! They _were_! What the fuck, Cas?!

Well, Dean was too tired and horny to contemplate that at the moment—he didn’t care if they were silk or burlap, they needed to get out of the way STAT. Dean shoved Cas’s stupid silk shorts down to his knees and then took a second or two to lube up his dick and get a little between Cas’s cheeks. After that, he wiggled his hand in between them and rubbed his thumb on Cas’s asshole before sliding it right inside, making Cas fling his hand out to grab the sheets and moan quietly. Didn’t matter how tired Dean was, or if this was just a quickie—he wasn’t about to just jump right in like that, and ‘sides, this would serve a dual purpose. He wasn’t going to leave Cas hanging, either, and some fingering ( _well, thumbing_ ) would get him up.

‘Course, that didn’t mean he was going to spend the usual amount of time down there—they had things to do today. To say nothing of the fact that Dean wanted to get off. Right now. After a little work, Dean stopped what he was doing and gripped his cock, pushing between Cas’s cheeks and rubbing at his asshole some more, only this time with the head of his dick, and damn, it felt good. Cas was pushing back, though, bending forward right how Dean needed him to, eager to get boned even this early, and Dean wasn’t in the mood to deny him. Nope, he was in the mood to _oblige_ him, because this’d been his idea in the first place. And so, with a soft sigh of his own to go with Cas’s happy groan, he gently pushed his hips forward, savoring that tight heat every inch of the way.

 _Fuck_ yes. He needed this after yesterday—and this morning. Dreams just never cut it—they were always _off_ somehow. The sensations weren’t right, the locations weren’t right, and the sounds sure as hell weren’t right. Dreams could never really duplicate the way Cas would whimper and gasp when Dean gave an experimental push or when he idly reached up to brush his nipple before reaching down and grabbing Cas’s cock. Yeah. That was nice. But what was going on below his waist was nicer as he thrust again, and when Cas gave no indication that he was uncomfortable, he just kept it up.

Dean wasn’t frantic— _way_ too sleepy for frantic. No, he wanted it slow and even—he could almost keep time this way. That amused him for some reason, and he smiled against the back of Cas’s neck as he jerked him in time with the movement of his hips. Cas’s fingers were flexing in time with his thrusts as well, gripping the sheets every time Dean pushed forward. Well, wasn’t that proof enough that this was a good idea— _everything_ was in time. Definitely meant to be this morning.

God, this felt good. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a morning quickie, just woken up and just rolled over to start having _sex_ —real sex, not a frot or a handjob or even a blowjob. Closest he could figure was when Cas woke him up sucking him off and then just fucking _mounted_ him, but that hardly counted. And if it did, Dean was so paying him back now.

Not that Cas minded. He was making all kinds of soft noise into his pillow, sometimes saying Dean’s name, sometimes mumbling out an encouragement that was too muffled for Dean to make out, but he was too sleepy and into what he was doing to really care. He just wanted to get off…get off in Cas’s _ass_ …yeah.

He rolled forward a little, pressing Cas down beneath him, but he didn’t speed up—didn’t need to. This was just perfect. His legs were getting tense and his stomach warm, but he could hold it off until Cas blew his load. And he knew that wouldn’t be long—Dean was doin’ what he needed to do with Cas’s cock, fondling his balls and squeezing him tight and doin’ all those things he loved. Cas’s noises were getting squeakier, too. That was always funny. Dean nuzzled the back of his neck, the hairs there tickling his nose, and then he leaned forward and bit down gently on his shoulder, stroking his thumb along the leaky slit in Cas’s dick and timing it with a deep thrust, pushing Cas into the mattress and grunting as he did because that felt _awesome_.

Cas certainly thought it felt awesome, because with an abrupt little cry, his body jerked and then Dean felt a hot, sticky mess start spurting all over his fingers. Well, wasn’t that sudden. Dean started thrusting again, just that same steady pace, idly jerking Cas off through his orgasm while Cas just sobbed quietly into his pillow; Dean could tell he was biting it. And _that_ was just _hilarious_.

Despite the fact that Cas finished ahead of him, it didn’t take Dean too long to catch up—maybe a minute. Thinking about the dream helped; it hadn’t felt as good as what was going on, but damn if imagining it now didn’t improve things, remembering the way Cas’s long-fingered hands had looked splayed on the black hood of Dean’s car, his suit pants around his knees and his trench coat rucked up over his back as he’d looked over his shoulder at Dean and begged for more, for Dean to please fuck him _harder_ up the ass, and that was enough for him. With a thick grunt, Dean squeezed his eyes shut and held Cas tightly to him as he came, giving short, sharp thrusts all through his orgasm. _Fuck,_ yes _, this is it, this is what I wanted—fuck fuck FUCK—_

Dean’s first thought when he was finally done was that he hoped Cas would eventually have the good sense to turn his head out of the pillow, because he had to be suffocating himself.

Well, that wasn’t Dean’s problem. He was done, and he felt 200% better already. This was gonna be a good day.

“Come on,” he said, hissing a little as he pulled out of Cas’s ass, and then was unable to resist giving it a little slap and making Cas jump. “Wash up—then get your ass back in bed.”

“Yes, Dean,” Cas whispered dazedly, showing no signs that he planned on moving from where he was splayed limply on the bed, and Dean just rolled his eyes as he swung his legs out of bed and peeled the condom off and tossed it into the trash. He stretched, yawning hugely, and jiggled his limbs as he stood and moved across the room to the clean up.

Didn’t take long for the water to heat up, and he scrubbed up, thinking on how this was so much better than yesterday. Because yesterday, Cas had been a complete _dick_.

He still couldn’t believe that he’d discovered Cas on a _nude beach_. And of course the son of a bitch would be _naked_. Just prancing up behind him, dick swingin’ in the wind—God, that’d been awful. And Dean had told him so when he’d shown up at the car (mercifully dressed this time), snarling that that wasn’t acceptable and that he’d better not do that _ever again_. He’d thought that’d be the end of it—apparently, he’d thought wrong.

Cas had puffed up indignantly and said that it was _perfectly legal_ to be naked at the nude beach and he’d damn well take off his clothes all he wanted…and no amount of Dean yelling at him had made him back down. Matter of fact, it’d just made him yell right back at him, even throwing in his face that Sam didn’t say anything about Cas being naked, and that Dean hadn’t had any problem with _Amy_ taking her clothes off. By the time Amy and Sam had finally joined them, they were both just stewing in the car, arms crossed and not looking at each other and refusing to speak. Dean’d been all too happy to kick the two lovebirds out at the Marriott, but had been much less happy to have to take the Holy Hippy back to the motel room he and Sam still had shared during the job.

Dean hadn’t avoided him, but he’d still been given the Silent Treatment all the way—and Dean had been more than happy to oblige the stupid nudist this time. Sure, Dean’d gone out and got dinner and they’d eaten at the same table, but then they’d retreated right back to their separate corners, sleeping in different beds at the end of the day.

Stupid angel. And here Dean’d been planning to take him out to a nice place to eat, too. But no, he’d decided to be a complete bastard and moon the world and ruin the whole day. Fortunately, Dean was awesome and had managed to fix things this morning.

He shook off his hands and tugged his shorts back up, then scowled a little when he saw that Cas was still just laying there, his eyes closed and the blankets half on him. Dean shuffled over and shook him. “Cas—come on. Get up and clean off, that’s nasty.”

Cas gazed soppily and sleepily up at him for a moment, and then he finally pushed the covers off, tugging his shorts up a little as he did—seriously, those were fucking silk. Black, shiny, and silky. What the fuck was he doing with silk shorts? He’d certainly never seen them before, and no way Bobby would put up with that crap…and the more Dean thought about it, he had a sneaking suspicion that it had been Amy’s idea. Dean watched Cas shuffle across the floor, and then scowled again at the thought of Amy.

Man. Amy had nice tits. Fucking Sam. Oh, and then _Cas_ had gotten to enjoy them all fucking day too, the little prick.

Dean snorted, crawling into Cas’s bed and getting situated right in the warm spot where he’d been before. No, the idiot probably hadn’t enjoyed them at all—matter of fact, the second Amy had whipped those puppies out, he’d probably run screaming because _oh no, boobies_. That dumbass never could appreciate the finer things in life, like hangin’ out for hours with a naked hot chick on the beach.

Hmph.

Cas didn’t take too long up at the sink, and soon he was coming back as Dean had ordered. He put one knee on the bed, and Dean heaved forward and grabbed his arm before falling right back into bed, dragging Cas with him. They both flopped around, getting deep under the covers, and Dean got situated right behind Cas, slipping his arms around him and getting Cas’s silk-covered butt right up against his hips where he wanted it. Cas sighed as Dean nuzzled the back of his neck before pressing his lips there, stroking Cas’s soft middle.

“So, you have a nice time while we were working?” Dean murmured, keeping his eyes closed and not minding the way Cas’s hair was tickling his nose. It was a bit lame as conversation went, but he figured that the first part of Cas’s little trip would probably be safe to talk about.

“Yes,” Cas murmured, petting Dean’s forearm where it was draped around him. “Did your hunt go well?”

“Mmhmm. Easy-peasy. Just a curse. What about you?”

Cas shifted, settling more comfortably against Dean. “We went to the zoo,” he said, wrapping his fingers around one of Dean’s hands.

Dean huffed out a bit of a laugh. “You like that?”

“Yes, very much. We fed the birds and Amy let me go to the petting zoo.”

Dean snorted, unable to resist nosing his way forward so he could nibble behind Cas’s ear. God, he was a dork. “Seriously? A petting zoo? Those are for kids.”

“ _I_ enjoyed it,” Cas huffed back at him, though he was too tired to have any kind of oomph behind it.

“Whatever. What else’d you do?” Dean asked, using his free hand to stroke up Cas’s front, pausing to brush his nipple a little before playing across his ribs.

“We went to eat at a lot of good restaurants—Indian, and Japanese, and Mexican, and Italian. They were very good. We also visited the aquarium. I bought a preserved starfish.”

Yeah, that all sounded about Cas’s style. “You get any other souvenirs?”

“Amy told me to buy a shirt from the zoo to remember it. I told her I didn’t need a shirt to remember it, but I bought one anyway. I also bought evening clothes.”

That got Dean’s attention. “What—you went clothes shopping?” he asked, rubbing his hips along Cas’s butt a little, feeling the silky fabric there, and then sliding one finger under the hem to snap the elastic. “That where these came from?”

“Yes,” Cas sighed, tilting his head to accommodate Dean’s seeking lips. “I like them. I’m going to buy more.”

“Why the hell…” Dean paused to yawn before resuming, “…did you need to buy fancy underwear?”

“Amy said I should get them to go with my new suit and shoes.” 

“ _Suit_ and _shoes_?” he demanded. “What else, did you get ribbons for your hair?”

“No, but Amy did put some gel in my hair.” Dean suppressed a disgusted noise, and Cas didn’t notice; he just kept talking. “She said that she wanted to go out and wear a new dress that she bought that night, and that I would need evening clothes to go with her. That was the night we went to the Italian restaurant, and then she took me on a date to a nightclub afterward.” Cas turned his head, trying to look back at Dean. “Not a romantic date,” he said quickly. “Amy told me friends can go on dates like that.”

Dean just snorted again, sliding one hand into Cas’s shorts to rest on his hip. “I _know_ you weren’t fucking _dating_ her, dumbass,” he said, amused. “Pretty sure Sam’d murder you if you tried, anyway.” He spent a minute just nuzzling and nibbling and pressing soft kisses up and down Cas’s neck, _hmming_ when Cas reached back to get his fingers in Dean’s hair, squirming a little against him. “Well,” Dean said when he finally stopped, pressing his cheek against his soft hair, “if we ever need someone to go undercover somewhere fancy, we can get you dressed up and send you in, I guess.”

Cas had no answer, so after a moment Dean started talking again. “I got plans,” he mumbled. “For us, I mean, now that you’re not babysitting Amy and we’re on our own. Plotted us out a route. Gonna circle up through California, hit three national parks, then come back down along the coast. Stop at the beach for you.” Dean scowled against Cas’s warm neck. “ _Real_ beaches. Keep your damn clothes on.”

He could practically feel Cas scowling back. “That was _legal_ , Dean,” he answered, still managing to inject a little pissiness in his words.

Dean wasn’t interested in having that argument again; he scooted back and grabbed Cas’s shoulder, turning him around as he rolled a little onto his back and took Cas with him. Cas wasted no time curling his arms around Dean, and Dean returned the favor and got busy kissing away Cas’s bitchface. Worked like a charm, of course.

“Anyway,” Dean huffed, combing his fingers through Cas’s hair a little, “we’re gonna hit Death Valley first. You like deserts, and all, and that’s a good one.”

Even though they were both still somewhat sleepy from their combination of just waking up and just fucking, he could see Cas’s pleased expression, his eyes brightening, so Dean continued. “After that, gonna drive up and hit Yosemite. Spend a couple of days there—you’ll like it. Then we’re gonna round it out with Redwood Forest, so you can commune with all those bigass trees or whatever you do. We’ll take the coast road back—good old Route 1. Lots of beaches along the way; we can stop at some of ‘em…let you see the waves and some animals if you want.”

“I would,” Cas breathed, and Dean had no answer to that but to kiss him again, pulling him more tightly against him and reaching down to give his ass a squeeze through the silk before just reaching into it and getting a handful of warm flesh instead.

“So…that’s our road trip,” Dean whispered against Cas’s mouth, turning so he was more on his side, his body pressed up against Cas. “Sound good to you?”

“Yes—very much. I’ve never had a vacation; I’m enjoying it,” Cas mumbled back through Dean pressing little kisses against his mouth.

“Mmm—most of my vacations are just comin’ home to you ‘n’ Bobby,” Dean said, pushing his hips forward a little to bump against Cas’s, making them both grunt softly.

“Amy—Amy said there was no formal definition of vacation,” Cas answered, sounding a little breathless now, “so it can be…whatever you want.”

Dean snorted, smiling a little as he thrust his hips forward against, slowly pushing Cas onto his back. “Yeah, it can,” he agreed, enjoying the way Cas’s hands were traveling up and down his back, finally stopping to cling at his shoulders as he managed to slowly settle in between Cas’s legs. “Can be anything you want,” Dean murmured, tilting Cas’s chin up and kissing his neck, pausing to bite down gently, which made Cas gasp and arch up against him. “So long as you enjoy it and have fun.”

Cas gave a trembly little moan when Dean rocked his hips again, enjoying the friction there, and he could feel Cas starting to get hard again. He lifted his head and rested his forehead against Cas’s, just keepin’ that up. “You enjoyin’ it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Cas managed, soundin’ shaky and getting a leg around him.

“Mmm—wanna have fun?” Dean asked, reaching down tugging his shorts down in front so he could rub his hardening prick against all that stupid slippery silk.

“ _Yes_ ,” Cas answered, his hands sliding down Dean’s back and pushing insistently at Dean’s shorts, getting them down and off of his ass.

“Sounds good to me.”

Dean kissed him then, _hard_ , and that was all it took to switch Cas into Frenzy Mode.

They really shouldn’t have gone for Round Two—they had a lot of driving to do today—but Dean didn’t give a shit. He’d have a nice, slow morning fuck with Cas if he wanted, and then he’d turn around and have a nice, not-so-slow morning frot with Cas, too.

He was on vacation.


	5. After All These Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good things must come to an end…Dean and Cas share their last night of their vacation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God! It’s been forever!
> 
> And yeah, that’s my fault. Blame me, Das Mervin. Writer’s block is a bitch, and it got to the point that I basically had to hand this fic over to Mrs. Hyde, something I should’ve done a very long time ago. But that isn’t the only thing that has been going on. Holy Christ, both my and Mrs. Hyde’s lives have gotten turned upside-down. Most of it bad, but a little of it good, too—not the least of which is that Hyde moved to another state to start a new high-stress industry job. However, that’s still not much of an excuse to leave you guys hanging for this long. So, we finally can conclude “Patience” with the last two segments and finally, finally move on to other fics. Because we have them written! This one was just standing in the way. I can’t guarantee that our updates will be as frequent as they were before, but I can guarantee that there won’t be nine months in between them.
> 
> So, hello to all of our old readers and our new ones as well, thank you all so much for joining us now or for sticking it out this long, and enjoy the two-part conclusion to “Patience”.
> 
> Das Mervin

Dean stuck a five into the battered tip jar next to the waving cat before snatching up the brown paper bag loaded with his General Tso’s and Cas’s chicken chow mein, detouring only to grab a handful of soy sauce and hot mustard packets to put on his egg rolls. He checked his watch as he bumped the door open with his shoulder—yeah, Cas’d better be done by now. Otherwise, he wasn’t gonna get to eat.

Dean sighed, shaking his head as he set their dinner down in the front seat beside him and started the car, pulling out of the tiny Chinese restaurant and back out onto the road to head to the motel. He still couldn’t believe he’d given in, but, well…they _were_ on vacation. And that did include Cas, so it was only fair that he get to do something that he wanted to. Dean supposed it wasn’t…too terrible. 

Goddamn, but he spoiled that angel way more than he deserved.

Traffic wasn’t bad, here on the outskirts of town where they were staying, so it wouldn’t take him long to get back, which was good—he was hungry. He’d spent all day out on the town, checking out some local bars and catching a couple of local bands playing some concert venue that wasn’t _too_ bad—they were old school rock revivalists, it seemed. It’d been nice. But now he was heading back—they’d both had the afternoon to spend apart, and Dean would be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t pretty happy to be getting back to Cas. It was the last day of their vacation, after all—he didn’t want to spend it all apart. Even if Dean was only just now _finally_ getting to do things _he_ wanted and eat food that _he_ preferred. The whole damn trip had been about Cas, it seemed like—right down to the damn the motel he’d picked for today.

He was ignoring his own rule with that one. That rule’d been drilled into him since the beginning—stay in cheap motels because those are the ones that are best targets for the credit card scams and easiest ones to skip out on if you needed to. Upscale ones were bigger risks. It wasn’t like he’d checked into the Waldorf Astoria or somethin’, but this still wasn’t their usual type of dive—and it was Amy’s fault.

That’s not to say they hadn’t slept in the usual for the rest of the trip, crashing wherever was close and cheap after checking out the scenery. When they’d headed out after their little to-do that first day, they’d spent the entire afternoon running around Death Valley. Dean thought it was boring, but Cas had been over the moon for it, staring open-mouthed at the landscape for minutes on end without moving or talking. Dean didn’t like deserts—so it was very much an improvement for him the next day when they managed to hit Yosemite before lunch. Yeah, he hated camping, but he’d admit that it was really pretty country, even if Glacier National was better. Cas had gone running around in it like an idiot, of course, and at one point, Dean had even just let him off his leash—they’d split up, Dean taking a well-worn hiking trail while Cas just went charging off into the trees. They’d met up about an hour and a half later when Dean had called his cell phone and told him to get his ass out of the brush and back up on the actual trails.

Their second day at Yosemite had been nice, and then they’d woken up early the next day and headed up to Redwood Forest. _That_ had been pretty damn incredible. Dean’d seen it before, but those bigass trees really weren’t something you ever got used to. He also still hadn’t gotten used to Cas and his little reminders of what he used to be, like when he found a specific tree and was so excited that it was still there and still just like he _remembered_ it, because during his time of watching the Earth just do its thing, he for no reason just decided to watch this one tree grow from the ground up. Dean suspected he was that happy about remembering it at all because it seemed like there was hardly any angel left in there; these days Cas couldn’t remember things quite how he used to. He still freaked out about it on occasion, and then everyone had to talk him down and reassure him that he didn’t have dementia just because he couldn’t remember every language ever spoken on Earth anymore. Dork.

So, Redwood Forest had been spectacular, and Dean had happily traipsed around in that one with Cas. It’d been another two-day trip, seeing as they’d arrived a little late for the first day, but they’d left in the afternoon to start heading back down to San Diego along Route 1. It’d been forever since Dean had even driven a tiny distance on Route 1, let alone down the entire California coast, so he’d had a ball with that one, opening up his baby all along the coast with the windows down and the radio on. He’d done as he’d promised though, too, pulling off occasionally to let Cas get out and stare vacantly at the beach views, and at one point they’d even stopped to run around at Point Reyes National Seashore. But they hadn’t stayed there long, because Dean’d wanted to make it to the Ventana Wilderness, which was their last stop before they rolled back in to San Diego to pick up Sam and Amy.

The wilderness had been pretty impressive—nice mix of mountains, forest, and desert. They’d spent part of the evening yesterday and all morning today wandering around in it. They’d split up again, and Dean hadn’t had to call him to find him that time—by chance, he’d found him all on his own. He’d been walking down a trail to find a spot with better reception and he’d seen Cas in a break in the trees. There he’d been, sitting down on a rock, and Dean had been amused to see the idiot reaching out and gently petting a bird—which had let him do it, of course, because that’s what animals did around Cas. The bird had ditched immediately when Dean got too close, but the butterfly sitting on Cas’s head hadn’t.

God, Cas was such a friggin’ _dork_.

He supposed it was…that bit of stupidness that made him that’d made him pick a slightly nicer motel than usual that night when they arrived in San Diego instead of just finding yet another sleazy Tiki Motel.

When they’d been hunting for a motel after that first day Death Valley, Cas had turned to him and, in a hopeful voice, asked if they could stay somewhere with a hot tub.

For a few seconds, Dean’d nearly hit the roof—because what the _fuck_?! Just what was he hoping for on this trip?! But then he’d realized exactly what Cas meant when he started blathering on about how much he enjoyed it at the Marriott where he was with Amy…

Yeah—Cas just wanted the warm water.

Dean had scowled at him and told him _no_ , they weren’t gonna stay at some ritzy three-star hotel just so Cas could go boil himself like a lobster. Cas had looked sulky for a bit, but Dean had seen to it to make him stop _that_ at the motel they’d actually stayed at. And they’d continued to stay in motels that he and Sam favored every stop, because that was the only sensible thing to do when you were checking in under the name of Francis Oglethorpe.

But…that damn angel…

Yeah. Their motel had a hot tub. And that’s where he knew Cas had spent all afternoon.

It wasn’t _just_ seein’ that dumbass with a bug in his hair, though. Dean…he didn’t _owe_ it to Cas, but he’d felt obligated to treat him anyway because yeah, Dean may have planned their stops with him in mind, but every time they’d checked in for the night after they’d enjoyed nature, Cas had quickly turned things around to be all about Dean, and he had been _determined_. He’d exerted himself in bed in ways he hadn’t done in a _long_ time, and he’d done it every single night for the whole damn trip. Shit, he’d left Dean a quivering wreck more than once, something Dean infinitely preferred to do to _Cas_ because Cas wasn’t the master around here. So it didn’t matter that Dean had _already_ been treating him with all those national parks and all that ethnic food, he just felt the need to do one more thing to make up for Mouth Marathon Week. Why the fuck did it have to be letting him jump in a _hot tub_ , though?

Hmph. Dean didn’t care—he didn’t have to deal with it. Cas could sit around in a boring hot tub all he wanted, so long as he didn’t do it around Dean, didn’t get any ideas that they’d be doing it again, and didn’t even _think_ about badgering him to join him.

Just as he’d thought, the trip back to the motel did _not_ take long, and when he swung into their room, he was greeted by the sound of the toilet flushing. Good—Cas was done with the hot tub. Dean would’ve been glad to eat both his and Cas’s dinner if the dumbass wasn’t out of that damn tub yet. He was not so glad about the door to the bathroom opening and Cas wandering out, though, because he was completely naked. Dean wrinkled his nose—oh, yeah, angel wang was definitely what he wanted to see right before dinner.

Cas’s dick didn’t distract him from the way he brightened, though. “Dean, hello,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d be back yet.”

“Yeah, obviously,” Dean said, gesturing towards him.

“I was taking a shower,” Cas retorted, going to the sink to wash his hands.

Dean glanced at his butt for a couple of seconds before shaking his head and starting to set out dinner. “Well, get dressed—I’m not eating with you if you’re not wearing clothes,” he grunted.

Cas did as he was told, and by the time Dean had everything set up, Cas was dressed in a ratty T-shirt and a pair of his stupid silk boxers—one of about three _dozen_ pairs that he’d bought in San Francisco. That was also all Amy’s fault—why the hell she’d felt the need to buy him those Dean had no idea, but she’d created a monster. Cas had decreed that nothing but silk was gonna touch his delicate butt from then on, and he’d all but demanded they find a store as soon as possible. It’d been a piece of cake to find a place in San Fran that sold ‘em (Dean had not gone in with him for that particular purchase).

Cas looked pleased with Dean’s choice of dinner, and so they both settled in, not saying much as they ate. Cas asked what he did, of course, and Dean told him the abridged version, leaving out certain parts (like the part where he’d gotten a pretty blatant offer from a hot chick to head back to a different motel and make some noise, because he still ruled), and Cas’s day was summed up in one sentence—he spent it in the hot tub. Of course he did. Dork.

Dinner never took long when they were both focused on their food, and so Dean was wrapping up his empty box and reaching for a fortune cookie in short order. He didn’t read the fortune; he knew he could get real ones from genuine psychics (which he didn’t want to know if he could help it), and every fortune he’d ever read from a cookie was wrong. But he did eat the cookie, and Cas ate his own after reading his fortune before setting it aside. Dean watched him get up to go brush his teeth, and then set to clearing the table. After he was done with that, he went up to brush his own teeth, but he didn’t feel it necessary to obsessively floss like Cas was doing now. So he just nudged him out of the way with his hip and grabbed his toothbrush.

Even though Dean’d gotten started after Cas, he was still done before him. He filled up his glass and took a long drink of water before he headed back to the bed, stretching and popping his back as he did. He kicked off his shoes flopped down on the mattress, sighing hugely, and stared at the ceiling, listening to Cas mess around up at the sink.

Dean was…somewhat alarmed but mostly just disgruntled with how much he didn’t want this to be their last day. Matter of fact, he’d been toying with the idea of extending their trip another week yesterday—not just for himself, but for Sam, too. He got to see Amy less than Dean got to see Cas, after all, ‘cause he couldn’t exactly take Amy out on a hunt for serious private time. It’d be nice for both of them. He’d searched for a few more places to go in California—some roadside museums, for instance, and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, little things that he could enjoy along with some other state parks for Cas, seeing as California was full of ‘em. It hadn’t been any serious looking, of course, but around the time he’d been idly pondering how many of those things they could hit in an extra week, he’d gotten the call from Bobby that there were a couple of new cases cropping up that looked nasty enough that he and Sam needed to take care of them, so they’d better hurry on home after they were done in San Diego.

God—what the hell, man? It wasn’t like he… _needed_ the extra week or anything. But for fuck’s sake, why in the ever-loving hell was the Mark acting up _here_? But that’s exactly what it was. Dean could feel it; it was that goddamn Mark, deciding no, they couldn’t have extra time, and Dean knew better than to fight it when it did it. They’d tried a few times, and he knew that the Mark could get really _inventive_ in driving them out of their home (like that rash of increasingly-violent storms that plagued Sioux Falls until he and Sam had realized what was up and had cleared out before the town could be leveled by a hurricane or something). So he hadn’t told Bobby to call someone else to take the cases—he’d resignedly let the first stirrings of the _itch_ dictate his actions.

It was still stupid—they weren’t settled, and they weren’t _home_. They were in friggin’ California.

The water shut off and Dean glanced back up at Cas. He had just turned around and was coming to the bed, and God, he looked dumb—damp hair all over the place, silk boxers with that absolutely _ridiculous_ “Elvis Pretzel” shirt he’d bought at Goodwill because he never actually looked at what the shirts had on them or the colors they were, just if they fit him, his blue eyes all big and soft…

The second Cas’s knee hit the bed and he started getting into it, Dean leaned up and grabbed him, yanking him down into bed and getting his arms around him, his jaw tight. Cas gave a little grunt, but he didn’t protest or even seem all that surprised—he just curled his arms around Dean in return, tucking his face in against Dean’s neck and sighing contentedly.

Fucking Mark of Cain. Dean hated it right now—because he knew this was its fault, too. Of all the things it did to make him a wanderer who could never have a home, it was screwing around with his head that was the worst it did. Whether it was hitting him hard with loneliness and homesickness while he was out on the road, keeping his mind off of home to keep the trips long so that it was all the worse when he started missing it, or just turning up the regret when it was time to leave, it didn’t matter, result was still the same: it made him act like a goddamn pussy.

“Sorry we can’t make the trip a couple days longer,” Dean mumbled, inhaling the scent of the weird herbal shampoo Cas was currently using—yet another bit of hippie crap that he’d apparently picked up while with Amy.

“It’s all right,” Cas murmured back, his voice muffled from where he was pressed against Dean’s neck. “I understand. I’ve enjoyed myself anyway.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah. Me too.” He swallowed, his brief smile quickly vanishing. “I just…you know. Wish that maybe we could’ve done…more.”

“We did enough.”

Hmph—Cas didn’t get that enough was _never_ enough on vacation. Dumbass.

He closed his eyes, swallowing a little when he felt Cas’s hand slide around to press against his chest. Jostling him a little, he got Cas to look up so he could do what he wanted—that being kiss him.

Mmm—that was how he liked it. All minty fresh and just _Cas_. He was being particularly passive tonight, letting Dean do all the work and set the pace, which was good, because that was also what Dean wanted. He was barely even getting any tongue involved, just kissing him on the mouth, dipping down to nibble his jaw a little, making Cas tilt his head up so he could give his neck a little lick and suck, but then right back up for more kissing. He hated it when he was in this kind of a mood—he didn’t necessarily want action. He just wanted Cas here, with him like this.

Dean let go of where he’d been sucking on Cas’s lower lip; it was his turn to mash his face all up in Cas’s neck, thank you. After spending all day in this hot tub, he was even warmer and softer than usual there. And he’d been keeping himself shaved on the trip, so he wasn’t bristly. Dean really didn’t notice his stubble all that much anymore—no, that was crap, he definitely _noticed_ , he just didn’t _care_ so much now (goddammit). But it was still nicer when Cas was smooth; Dean supposed it was about like how it was with women shaving. He didn’t mind if they did or didn’t, but he would always prefer smooth and silky legs over Bohemian-style.

Trust Cas to still break out into goosebumps when Dean breathed on him, though. Dean snickered against the spot he’d been tasting, which just made Cas twitch, and, well, then he couldn’t help it. He’d just slid his hand up under his shirt to feel some warm angel skin, but with Cas already getting shivery over nothing, could Dean really resist digging his fingers into his ribs, just a little?

Cas jerked away when Dean squeezed, and he knew without looking that he’d be all bitchy now, which was just funny, so he didn’t even try not to laugh a little. “Seriously, Cas?”

Cas was glaring. “You know I don’t like that,” he said.

Dean snorted. “Yeah, I do—now come here.”

Cas always had to resist a little, but Dean was pretty sure it was just for show; he softened right back into Dean’s arms with just a few kisses. Sucker.

He did get a little stiff when Dean worked his hands back under his shirt, but Dean wasn’t gonna pick on him again; he just wanted to pet him without the clothes in the way. Come to think of it, they _were_ in the way, rucked up around Dean’s arms—it was easy enough to strip Cas out of it. Elvis Pretzel had left the building.

Only now Cas was tugging at his shirt too—fine, fine. He shucked his flannel and let Cas pull his tee over his head. That was better—no surprise that it was a bit on the warm side in here, what with Cas being in control of the thermostat all day. Being out of his shirt would have been an improvement even if it didn’t mean that he could now press all up against the angel.

Dean spent so long tasting all that warm skin on Cas’s neck and shoulders that he didn’t at first realize the hands on his stomach were actually working at his fly. He pulled back to give Cas a look—the horndog—but of course he was concentrating on Dean’s pants and didn’t notice. Oh, but Dean noticed all right—noticed the damn tent in the front of his shorts. Stupid angel, always ruining a perfectly good makeout with a hard-on. Shit, that’s probably why he wanted the silk shorts in the first place—‘cause it felt so good on his dick when he was humping Dean’s leg. Well, he wasn’t the only one who could play that game—Dean could hump the silk too if he wanted.

So he let Cas open his jeans and get them down a little in front and out of the way, and then he pushed his hands aside so he could shove his own shorts down and get his dick up against Cas’s silk-covered hip. Yeah, that was nice—nothing like silky underwear. Even if they were on a dude.

He moved back up to kiss Cas again—and he meant business this time, no more of that pussy butterfly-kiss crap. Cas figured it out quick when Dean got his tongue in his mouth, and he gave as good as he got. Well, not quite as good, ‘cause nobody but nobody could kiss like Dean Winchester, but dammit if the little bastard wasn’t a close second. But because he was still only second, he let Dean roll him onto his back so he could get on top of him. Good—easier to rub on him that way.

Maybe those silk boxers weren’t such a stupid idea after all. Dean really hadn’t gotten to get his prick up against satiny underwear in years and he’d forgotten how awesome it was. Sure got him up in a hurry. In fact, he was pretty sure if he put his mind to it he could rub one out right here. Not that he was going to, ‘cause that would be a waste of a perfectly good angel, but still. Besides, as if he’d pull a Cas like that; he wasn’t that easy.

Shit. He’d just fixed things with his shirt, so it figured that his jeans would start to piss him off instead. God, every time he just wanted to sit back and enjoy himself, something had to interrupt him. With a grunt he rolled off Cas to shove the stupid things down—and there went Cas, taking it as his cue to sit up and start pulling them off, taking his boxers with them. Rolling his eyes, Dean let him, lifting up to let him get them off his hips and holding still so he could peel his socks off along with them. One of the many, many important lessons Dean had taught Cas was that few things were skankier than sock-sex.

And now he was gonna have to teach him another lesson, it looked like—or rather, _re_ teach him the same lesson he’d been trying to drill into his thick skull since they’d first started their weird whatever. Here he came, crawling back up on top of him and making straight for his dick. No, sir—not tonight. No way in hell Dean was letting him around Sam and Amy tomorrow with a sore jaw. That and, well—like Dean said, he’d done enough of that this week. He’d done that _all_ week—the one more lesson Cas had never learned was that Dean’s dick wasn’t a damn lollipop, and Dean was pretty sure no amount of teaching would fix _that_ one either. Jesus—who would’ve thought that he’d find himself annoyed that someone wanted to blow him so much?

Dean waited until he was in arm’s reach and then just grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back on the bed. He went with a little _whoof_ , and Dean got back on top and used his tongue to keep him from talking. And started humping those silky shorts again.

Cas was humping back now, though—fully hard and ready, as usual, and so Dean pulled away with a sigh. Might as well get to it. He didn’t bother with kissing-down, just gave him one last good, deep one, and then moved to get rid of the shorts.

Silk boxers. Shit.

Cas wiggled to help him get them off, pushing up on his elbows, but Dean pushed him back down—and made sure to drag his hand down his chest, lingering a little there on the middle, and smirked at Cas’s starry eyes. Got him every time. Yeah, and so what if he had to lean back up for another kiss, too? With the fucking Mark acting up, who knew when would be the next time he’d get to. He was on vacation, goddammit—he could do whatever the hell he wanted to. 

Which really just pissed him off, now that he thought about it, because now he was gonna do something he didn’t wanna do. His overnight bag was already right by the bed where he’d dropped it when he’d gotten back with the food. And there was the strawberry-kiwi lube that he’d felt like an idiot for buying this afternoon, even if it had been appropriately girly to ward off any potential suspicion. He sat up and blew out a breath as he wiggled down and got situated right at Cas’s-mole-level—one of the less-pleasant levels of Hell for him—and giving Cas’s chubby a few loose strokes.

Hmph—if Cas could work himself to mouth-exhaustion every night this week, Dean could return the favor at least a little.

Dean flipped up the cap and squirted the lube all along Cas’s prick as he worked it—he always used way more than necessary when it came to blowjobs. Cas knew what flavored lube meant, and Dean could feel him tensing up beneath his hand, his breath coming a little faster, and Dean couldn’t help but grin a little. Apparently the novelty of a blowjob just never wore off for Cas. Well, Dean didn’t mind; made his job easier, which he needed in this situation.

He got started with a nice long lick, right up the underside, to give Cas a chance for his initial little hip-jerk. And for Dean to taste the new lube—not bad. He’d read good things about it. Then again, anything was better than angel-spooge.

A twiddle with his tongue had Cas sucking in a sharp breath, which came out as a nice little moan as Dean slid his mouth down his cock. Then he went back up, sucking as he went, and slid his fist up along with it (two for one—felt good for Cas and kept that lube moving around for him). He would have let out a resigned sigh as he went back down, but, well, dick-in-mouth syndrome, so all he could do was snort it out through his nose as he went to sucking.

Even after all this time, giving Cas head _still_ always left him so conflicted—hell yeah he was blowing Cas’s mind, but goddammit, he was fucking _blowing Cas period_ , he didn’t want to be good at that! Okay, so he could just chalk it up to Cas being totally easy—but Dean Winchester never got by with that excuse. No, it was always because he was awesome—which brought him right back around to the fact that he was good at giving head.

And to add insult to injury, Cas was still way better.

Well, fine, if that’s how it was, he’d make it good on his own merit, without the dick-sucking. Dean brought up his hands so he could play with Cas’s balls like he liked, and then slid down to press his taint with his thumb. And once he heard that little hitch in Cas’s moans, he went down further until he felt the tight pucker of his asshole under his slippery finger. He pulled off of his dick with a pop just as he slid that first knuckle in, and grinned up at the breathy squeak Cas let out. He went in a little deeper and then back, just finger-fucking him a little while he tugged his cock. Dean could look up at Cas now that he wasn’t sucking him off, and so he did, enjoying the way his fists were tight in the sheets and his mouth open and panting as he looked back down at where Dean was working him.

Dean gave him a grin. “You like that?” he asked, and right when he saw Cas lick his lips and take a breath to answer, he slid his finger in deep right _there_.

“ _Yes!_ ” It came out of Cas as a yelp, his eyes scrunching shut and his back arching and his head pressing back into the pillow.

Dean chuckled, gave him another prod right where he liked it and getting a quavering noise for his troubles, before he pulled out and went back to sucking. Well, he would have, if his first mouthful hadn’t told him that he needed more lube; he’d used up a lot and Cas was getting leaky. Jesus, why did he leak so much? He probably did it on purpose. Dean kept busy by licking and sucking all along the length of his cock as he fumbled around for the lube next to him, and gave him another nice big drizzle once he found it. There—it was all nice and strawberry-kiwi again when he slid it back in his mouth, slow and deep (as much as he ever went, anyway). 

“ _Dean._ ” Cas’s long moan of his name made this totally worth it.

Dean didn’t know how long he’d been sucking it, but enough was enough, and he’d gotten the noises he was after. So he took a breath, slid way down until he felt the head bumping the back of his throat and worked his tongue all along the underside, held it for a bit until he heard Cas softly sob his name again, and then he was done. He didn’t just pull away quick—bad form—but nice and slow, sucking as he went, giving Cas that tongue twirl followed by a hard suck at the end for a finish, just like Cas always did to him and making him thrash a little on his pillow, also just like Cas always did to him.

Wiping his mouth, Dean rocked back on his knees to survey the damage: Cas, eyes shut and mouth open, quivering and flushed pink all over, prick slick and throbbing on his stomach.

Yep—Dean would say that he’d evened things up quite a bit. But he was done with cock in his mouth—now he just wanted the angel in his arms, and who gave a damn how dumb that sounded.

Since he’d skipped the kiss-down, he went for a kiss-up on the way back, nipping at the soft skin of Cas’s belly, mouthing up over his ribs, and tugging a little at his nipples before getting back up to his mouth. Sucking on Cas’s tongue was way better than sucking on his dick. Cas’s kiss back was all sloppy, which told Dean he’d rocked his world pretty hard. So he let Cas get his arms and legs all wrapped around him, let him shove his tongue in his mouth as far as he could, and even let him roll Dean onto his back and get on top. Just so long as he got to keep kissing and holding him right now, Dean figured he’d pretty much let Cas do what he wanted.

But he drew the line when Cas pulled away and made a beeline for south of the border again. “Hey, man,” Dean grunted, grabbing his shoulders. “Cut that out—come back up here.” Cas blinked a little, but promptly launched himself right back up for another makeout. He landed on his elbows with his arms around Dean’s shoulders and his legs straddling his hips, which let him get all wrapped around Dean like a spider, but that was just fine with him. Dean wrapped him in his arms right back, holding him tight against his chest and kissing back just as hard.

Dean was always noticeably less horny after sucking cock, so there was no urgency in his mind at the moment. He could just go back to kissing indefinitely, as far as he was concerned. Not Cas, though—and no surprise. After getting fingered and sucked? Hell, Dean was half-surprised he wasn’t in a full-on sex-fit. And he _wasn’t_ in a full-on sex fit, but he was already wiggling around on top of Dean, rocking his hips and trying to get him some friction as they kissed. Dean stroked his back and kept his kisses long and easy, trying to get him to slow his roll a little. Cas just started grinding harder, so that didn’t work—time to fight dirty, then.

Dean reached up, curling one hand around his neck to hold him still, and sliding the other up over his stomach to press right on his breastbone.

Cas froze, and then just melted, stopping all that grinding and pressing himself tight against Dean’s chest, his kisses going from wild and messy to soft and deep. _Yeah, that’s right._

Only it backfired—Cas pulled away after a moment, his eyes wide and bright, and he sat up, bringing up one hand to hold Dean’s close, and the other to stroke right there over his thumping heart, and dammit, he was giving him that fucking _look_ now. Dean swallowed, shook his hand off so he could pull him back down to kiss him again.

Cas was moving his hips again, but rolling them nice and slow this time. He pulled away just for a minute, and Dean saw him going for the forgotten lube. Dean beat him to the punch, though, and he watched amusedly as he got a little fumble-fingered when Dean wrapped his hand around their cocks when he wasn’t looking. Cas wound up just squirting the lube everywhere, as much over Dean’s hand as their dicks, which was just funny, but then Cas was tossing the tube aside and his hand joined Dean’s, their fingers tight and slippery and their cocks hot against each other, and, well, things were just pretty damn awesome now.

Cas started moving, getting his dick sliding against Dean’s. Dean kept his own grip tight, and things felt good, but Cas was still sitting up. He said he wanted to _hold_ him, goddammit, so he was _gonna_. He reached up to grab him by the shoulder with his free hand and pull him down where he wanted him, warm and skinny against his chest. Cas came easily, leaning down against his chest and meeting his lips with his already open mouth.

It took Dean a moment to realize that improving things on the holding-and-kissing-Cas front had kinda dialed back the awesome down south—the angle wasn’t so good for Cas to move his hips right. Yeah, when Cas was on top for a frot he usually sat upright, but whatever, Dean would help him out. Without breaking their kiss, he pulled his knee up a little, getting his foot on the mattress so he could push his own hips up a little—there, that was better. Only then Cas pulled away, the bitch, looking down between their hips, and that wasn’t awkward or anything, and then started wiggling. Dean was still focused on trying to get his dick to slide just right against Cas’s, and so it took him a moment to realize that Cas had moved one leg from where it was around Dean’s hip and was trying to nudge his knee between Dean’s thighs.

Stupid angel—didn’t he know scissoring was for chicks ( _and so,_ so _hot for chicks_ )? But he’d wedged his leg between Dean’s anyway, now sitting just across the one, and that freed up Dean’s own leg to bend his knee more and really use his foot for leverage, and shit if that didn’t actually improve things. With his knee between Dean’s legs, Cas was at a better angle too (heh—the angel angle), and even as he leaned down to lick his way into Dean’s mouth, he got his hips moving right and things were awesome again.

Cas seemed to have things well in hand, so Dean let go and pulled his hand out from between them, wiping the lube on the blanket so he could get his fingers into Cas’s hair. He closed his eyes, focusing just on the warm wetness of Cas’s mouth, the smell of Cas’s freshly-washed skin, the sound of the blankets and the bedsprings as Cas moved on top of, the hot, slick slide of their dicks together, the feel of Cas’s other leg nudging at Dean’s thigh—

His eyes shot open as he felt Cas rock back and grab the back of Dean’s other knee, pulling it up and out of the way, pushing his legs apart so he could position his hips right between them.

In the fucking _missionary_ position. On the fucking _top_.

“Hey—wait a minute—!” Dean started in still slightly-fuzzy indignation, planting one hand on his chest to push him off.

And the son of a bitch leaned right down into it, his eyes soft and sparkling, his weight pressing Dean down into the mattress. Cas’s fingers gripping their dicks tightened, and he moved his hips once, and _damn_ , if Goldilocks hadn’t found the way that was _just right_. And then his mouth was on Dean’s, his tongue pushing between his lips, he free hand tightly squeezing the one on his chest, and he rocked again, his narrow hips fitting perfectly between Dean’s spread thighs.

Okay, just—okay. This was fine—it was still just a frot, Dean could take it. He grunted a little into Cas’s mouth when he moved again, this time leaning his weight into it and pushing their dicks together even tighter. Cas pulled away a little then—to give him that _look_ again, dammit, and murmuring his name while he did it, making Dean’s throat go tight and keeping him from bitching him out—but at least that explained why Dean was letting him get away with this. It was also a good explanation for why Dean was just lying there and letting Cas thread their fingers together where they were against his chest, and then move their hands down to the pillow beside Dean’s head. Cas let go of their dicks, and Dean’s other hand was pinned too, and Dean was about to complain that they wouldn’t get anything done that way when whatever he would have said was lost in hiss when Cas rocked his hips _there_ , like _that_ , leaning into it even harder, and even with the lube the friction was _insane_.

Cas’s mouth was back, and he was still moving, starting to ride Dean in earnest, his fingers flexing where they were twined with Dean’s on the pillow. And then he was on the move, kissing a wet path to his neck. Dean bit his lip, bending both knees now and pressing upwards to meet Cas’s thrusts, tightening his thighs to keep Cas’s hot cock right where he wanted it. Shit, no wonder Cas always loved it when Dean mounted him like this—his dick was sandwiched _tight_ between Cas’s and his own stomach, and it was hot and slippery all around from the lube and this was fucking fantastic.

His eyes fell closed, short grunts escaping him as he tilted his head back, giving Cas room to work down where he was nibbling and sucking on the side of his neck. He wanted to wrap his arms around Cas and pull him close, but that wasn’t likely to happen when Cas got it into his head that he wanted to hold Dean down on the bed like he was. So he settled for turning his head towards where Cas was buried in the crook of his neck (and giving him a hell of a hickey, from the feel of it), and managed to find his ear with his tongue.

That got his attention, and Cas’s head popped up and then his mouth was on Dean, his kisses hot and wet and wild, and Dean matched him this time.

Shit, this frot was driving him _nuts_ —Cas so heavy on top of him and putting so much weight behind his thrusts made the drag of their cocks together so tight that it was just shy of painful—and Dean wanted _more_. He managed to wrestle one hand out of Cas’s and reached down to tightly grab one firm buttcheek, pressing against it to urge him faster.

And he obeyed; he sat up a little, letting go of Dean’s other hand so he could brace himself on his palms, and he just started _grinding_ his hips against Dean’s.

 _Fuck_ , yes, that was _exactly_ what he wanted. He strained upward, managing to reach Cas’s tongue with his own, reaching down to seize both buttcheeks to push him forward. The mattress was creaking beneath them, Cas’s breath hot in his mouth, and _shit_ , he couldn’t get close enough. He hooked one calf around the back of Cas’s legs, squeezing him close, and Cas moaned against him.

“Cas— _yes_ —” he grunted, jerking his hips upwards all while still pressing Cas down against their pricks.

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas breathed, turning his words into a wet kiss that trailed back down Dean’s jaw to his neck.

Dean could hear him panting in his ear; Cas’s breathing had a bit of a whine to it, which meant he was coming up on the finish line. Dean bit his lip and grabbed him with both calves and both hands, pulling him tight, tighter, _tight_ , his hips moving almost in a frenzy, desperate to catch up, _fuck_ , wanted to finish too—here—now, _with_ Cas—

“Oh— _oh—yes—Dean—!_ ” Cas’s cries trailed off it a wail, his hips jerking wildly as he spurted hot between them, and Dean bucked against him, the sparks flashing behind his eyes, the friction so much _too_ much and he wanted it wanted to _yes yes yes_ there—

“ _Fuck!_ ” he bellowed as he came, over and over until it was almost a sob, before finally fading out into a wheeze, the air squeezing out of him as his muscles went limp and Cas collapsed into a heap on top of him, the both of them just _done_.

And then the room was quiet; the only sounds were the two of them panting on each other and Dean’s heart pounding in his ears, gradually slowing back down as his eyelids started to droop. He didn’t know how long they’d been lying there when Cas started to move, but Dean had at least enough juice left to say fuck that and give him a squeeze, to make him stay right where he was, thank you very much. He’d just stopped wiggling so Dean could hold him properly, and he was just gonna stay there.

He let go of where he’d been digging his fingers into his asscheeks to move up and comb one hand through Cas’s rumpled hair and used the other to stroke up the smooth side of his back, just like he always loved to do. Cas gave a contented little sigh, and now with the sex-sweat cooling on his skin, it was Dean’s turn to break out into goosepimples.

He probably did that on purpose, too. Dean thought about leaning down and giving him a bite on the shoulder, to make sure he knew that Dean was onto him, but it was all the way down there and too much work to lift his head, so he settled for rubbing his foot along the back of Cas’s calf, sliding his other down to tangle their feet together—

—because he had his fucking legs wrapped around him.

Dean’s eyes shot open. He—goddammit, he had his legs _wrapped around_ Cas! On his back! And his _legs_ around him! Son of a _bitch_!

“Get off,” he growled, and Cas sighed a little before rolling off him—out from _between Dean’s legs_ , the little fucker, and oh, Christ on a cracker, how the fuck long had they been just sitting there in this mess?! Yeah, Dean knew it was always messier like that, ‘cause they were all pressed up against each other, but _Jesus_ , that shit was _everywhere_.

He was gonna fucking puke if he sat there with all that congealing jelly all over him. He lurched out of the bed and stomped up to the sink; Cas just laid there in bed like a damn slug.

Dean yanked the tap, not even bothering to wait for the water to warm up before wetting a washcloth and giving himself a vigorous scrubbing.

Stupid fucking angel—fucking riding him like a goddamn _woman_ —who the hell did he think he was? And he used up God knew how much of Dean’s new flavored lube, too—that wasn’t for frotting! Dean needed that shit—well, Cas was gonna waste it like that, see if Dean went down on him again in the near future, then.

Growling under his breath, he rewetted the cloth with the now-warm water and gave himself a last wipe-down, and then turned to glare at Cas.

Cas was still prone in the bed, but his head was turned and he was watching Dean’s every move, his eyes big and sleepy and soft.

Dean cleared his throat irritably. “Here, man,” he said, moving back over to the bed, switching off the floor lamp before tossing the warm rag on his stomach; Cas twitched a little when it landed. “Clean up.”

Cas looked soppily up at him for a moment more before grabbing the rag and wiping himself off. Dean had the small satisfaction of at least seeing that Cas was just as much a mess as he was. Only a small one, though, because Cas clearly didn’t care, just took care of the obvious before stopping and going back to gazing up at Dean.

Dean coughed a little, taking the rag from him and tossing it on the floor before yanking the bunched-up covers out from under Cas and swinging them up over him, and then crawling in himself. Cas reached over to turn out the bedside light and then snuggled right up to Dean.

God—it was still early, and here they were getting in bed and going to sleep already. He’d call it weak if he gave a bullcrap. And just because he hadn’t wanted to spend his last night playing the damn girl in bed, he did want to spend it with Cas—he supposed this was as good a way as any.

One of Cas’s hands was stroking down Dean’s side, almost tickling—and the little bastard had just better not get any ideas about that, that was for damn sure. He huffed a little sigh, and Dean felt his lips press against his shoulder. And goddammit, if something that little and stupid didn’t start making him feel all maudlin and pathetic. If it has been Sam acting like that, Dean would tell him that he totally sucked. But Dean didn’t suck, so that’s obviously not what it was, and he cleared his throat a little to ask, “So—you, uh, you like your vacation?”

Cas move his head to look up at him; his eyes were little dewy sparkles in the dark. “Yes—I enjoyed it very much.” His hand crept up from Dean’s side to press against his sternum. “Thank you.”

 _Oh, you little futher-muck._ He was not helping! “Yeah, well,” he ground out, “I’m glad you had fun. Figured you’d like all that nature crap.”

Cas pressed himself a little closer, bringing up one leg to hook around Dean’s. “I did—and I enjoyed being with you.”

Okay—that was it. Dean quickly reached up and cradled the back of Cas’s head to pull him close against his chest so he wouldn’t have to look at his face—and so Cas couldn’t see his. He covered his awful, pussy little sniff in all noise of the rustling covers, and swallowed the lump in his throat while pressing his lips on Cas’s hairline. Cas sighed contentedly, but otherwise didn’t move from where he was except to nestle closer.

Hmph. To hell with everyone. He was fucking still on his vacation, so he was gonna keep holding Cas, and as much as he wanted until it was over. _So fuck you, Cas, and all your stupid sappy shit_ —and just fuck anyone who said Dean sucked for feeling kinda sappy back. He’d be over it in the morning.

So there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are wondering about the “Elvis Pretzel” shirt, [this](https://www.threadless.com/product/4701/Elvis_Pretzel/style,design) is what Cas was wearing.


	6. So Happy Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Amy share their last vacation breakfast with Dean and Cas—and the pancakes aren’t the only things that are syrupy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we started this fic with Sam and Amy, and so we end it in the same place. And we finally see that couples meal together that people were asking for.
> 
> Mrs. Hyde

_The following morning…_

Amy jumped at the pinch on her butt, and whirled around to swat Sam away from her, giggling. He just easily ducked away from her hands (he could always evade or win any kind of fight with her, the bastard) and chuckled as he headed over to put the last of his clothes in his bag. Amy stuck her tongue out at him before going back to folding her clothes and packing up her own suitcase.

She’d had a _fantastic_ week—she was seriously sorry that it was over.

She and Sam had gone all over San Diego—they’d visited four of the city’s art museums and the Museum of Natural History. And yes, Amy had managed to wrangle him to the beach—and yes, it was a _public_ beach. Honestly, she had really only been doing as the Romans were doing on her first beach trip and was honestly more comfortable keeping her clothes on—unlike Cas, apparently. She’d never seen anyone fly out of his clothes as fast as he had that day; one minute he was standing there in his trunks and shirt, and she turned around to lay down her towel, and by the time she turned around, Cas was naked as a jaybird (incidentally, Dean was a lucky boy). But of course she had to needle Sam a little about going back to Black’s Beach and her particular interest in the prospect of seeing him sans trunks. And, also of course, when he refused, she had to tease him about worrying about shrinkage. That aside, she did enjoy ogling what parts of him were on display even with his trunks, and she wore her new bikini to return the favor.

For all his griping about it when she’d first proposed joining him for a vacation, Sam had clearly warmed to the idea in the interim. He’d surprised her one evening with tickets to an arthouse showing of the silent Hitchcock film _Blackmail_ accompanied by an acclaimed live organist, and had been more than happy to go out to fun restaurants and clubs with her—even danced a few times—and to spend the days leisurely walking together around the city. Just the other night, though, when they were cuddled up in bed after their night out on the town, Sam had told her that going everywhere had been fun and all, but had rather sheepishly confessed that his favorite part had just been being able to spend time with her and doing things that couples do.

Kissing him had been the only reasonable response to that, and it wasn’t just to cover up the fact that her eyes had misted over a little bit.

But, of course, all good things had to come to an end, and yesterday had been their last full day in California. Dean had called yesterday and said that he and Cas would swing by their hotel to pick them up around eight, so they could have breakfast before hitting the road. It was just past 7:30; Amy had already put away all her toiletries and souvenirs and whatnot and was just packing up her clothes. Sam, naturally, had mastered the art of travelling with minimal luggage and packing up what he did carry in a heartbeat, and was already ready to go and now just lounging on the sofa (when he wasn’t goosing her on the fly).

Zipping up her luggage and hauling it down to stand on the floor, she ambled over to the sofa and perched herself right on Sam’s lap—he obligingly made room for her to snuggle up against his chest and steal a kiss, his arms coming up around her to hold her close. “So—do you admit that I was right and that this was a good idea?” she asked.

It was not the first time she’d extracted this confession; Sam just gave an amused snort and said, “I haven’t changed my mind since the last time you asked.”

“Yeah, but I just want to make sure you don’t forget in the future the next time I have a brilliant idea.” She tilted her head up to give him a saucy look. “Maybe next time I won’t have to have your dick in my mouth before you agree.”

Sam’s expression appeared torn between irritation and lust, and interesting combination. “I’d already caved before you started that,” he informed her.

She gave a naughty giggle. “Are you suggesting that I just wanted it in my mouth for the hell of it?”

Sam really could speak volumes with just his eyebrows, and Amy decided that words were definitely overrated at the moment.

Leave it to Dean to call right when she was just gearing up for a pretty serious make-out.

Sam chuffed out an annoyed breath through his nose and broke away to answer it. Amy thought about groping him while he did to try to make him lose his concentration, but decided that the last time she’d done that was enough. Dean had actually called during that aforementioned blowjob, the morning she’d suggested their vacation—she’d stopped mid-blow to answer it, much to Sam’s outrage, and then handed the phone off to him before merrily picking up where she left off just to try to make him lose it. Suffice to say, despite Sam’s best efforts, Dean had guessed what was going on. So she just resumed her previous position against his chest to listen to the rumble of his voice and Dean’s tinny answer from Sam’s phone.

“Yeah, Dean?” Sam grunted.

Amy couldn’t quite make out Dean’s words on the other end, but she guessed what he was saying easily enough when Sam answered with, “Yeah, okay—we’ll check out and be right there.”

She sighed as Sam hung up before heaving herself to her feet. “On the road again?” she asked unnecessarily, and Sam nodded, looking a bit downcast about it.

A man his age really had no business being able to make cute little puppydog eyes like that. Amy couldn’t help but smile as she sidled up to him and put her arms around his neck; his hands came up to grip her butt (let it never be said that her Sam wasn’t an ass-man). She tilted her head back to look up at him and said, “I had a wonderful time.”

Sam’s smile was easy and warm. “Me too. Thanks for making me let you come along—and for everything else.”

She stood up on her tiptoes to kiss him, just one last gentle kiss before the vacation officially ended. “Love you,” she murmured against his mouth.

“Mmm—love you, too,” he said, sneaking in for another quick kiss, and then Amy let out her breath and dropped back down. “Well, let’s get out of here before Dean gets tired of waiting and starts leaning on the horn or something.”

“We’re on the seventh floor!” Amy laughed, grabbing two of her bags.

“You think that’ll stop Dean?” Sam asked dryly, picking up his duffle and Amy’s remaining bag. Amy just laughed and led the way down to the elevators.

Amy did the checking out, dumping all of the luggage on Sam to haul it out to the car. When she finished up and left the lobby, squinting against the bright morning sunshine, she spotted Sam loading their bags in the trunk of the Chevy, and trotted over.

Dean was standing outside the car, his jacket open and his collar popped, leaning casually up against the driver’s side door. She’d once asked him if he cultivated those GQ poses of his, or if it just came naturally. “Hey, Dean,” she said, crossing the parking lot to give him a buss on the cheek. “We ready to roll?”

Even after all this time, and the fact that he was all but family now, Dean still had to give her that smarmy, come-hither grin of his in greeting. Not that Amy would object to it—even pushing fifty, Dean was still more than a little easy on the eyes and quite a charmer (not to mention that guys weren’t the only ones with sibling-threesome fantasies). “Nah,” he said smartly. “I just thought I’d bring my car over here and sit in the parking lot.

“Smartass,” she responded, and ducked down to peer into the car. Cas was sitting in back and just staring out the window, the same as he did when they were driving. “Hey, Cas,” she called.

He turned to her and regarded her with his usual serious expression. “Hello, Amy,” he said.

“How are you this morning, sweetie?”

“Very well, thank you,” he said formally, and she snickered a little before straightening to open the back door. Sam had just closed the trunk and came around to the passenger’s side, ghosting one hand across her arm as he went, and Dean was swinging around to the driver’s seat, and they all got in and got buckled as Dean started the engine.

Breakfast was what really sealed the deal for Amy, really drove it home that the vacation was over. She and Sam had taken advantage of the wide array of restaurant options available in the heart of the city for every meal, including breakfast—from fresh beignets and pain au chocolat from a nearby French bakery, fluffy omelets from the little breakfast place that used all local produce, thick smoothies made with fresh-made yogurt after their morning runs along the beach together, to delicate crepes filled with fresh fruit and lightly sweetened whipped cream that Sam served to her in bed.

Dean, on the other hand, drove to the outskirts of San Diego before stopping, and when he did, he made a beeline for the first blue-plate-special greasy spoon he could find.

Sam seemed to be thinking along similar lines to herself, rolling his eyes at her a little as they got out of the car and headed in, and Amy just grinned a little back at him. And he wondered why she always took such great pains to feed him well when he wasn’t on the road.

Still, end of the vacation or no, they were a cheerful bunch as they went inside, Dean ragging on Sam, Sam sniping back at him, Amy laughing at the pair of them, and Cas silently trailing along behind them. They were ushered to a booth with the usual vinyl seats and Formica-topped table, waited on by a plump and brassy waitress named Cheryl, and got their hot, down-home food in no time at all. Complain all you want about the healthiness of places like this, but Amy could not deny that there was still something to be said for roadside diners.

Dean had been regaling them with a story about some time they’d been on job and Sam kept having the worst luck ever, which judging from Sam’s face she was pretty sure was at least partly made up, when their food arrived. They of course subsided into mostly quiet while they prepped and dug into their food, the only real sounds at the table the clink of cutlery on their plates.

After getting a few good bites in, Amy looked over at Cas, who had been almost entirely silent this morning. But after spending a few days with him, she knew that he could talk, and didn’t seem to have anything against it—he just _didn’t_ talk, not unless someone else talked first. He had cut his stack of blueberry pancakes into a very precise grid of smaller bites, and was eating them in that efficient, mechanical way of his, so that she couldn’t tell if he loved them or hated them. But there was one slight difference this morning from the meals she’d shared with him. In her experience Cas tended to devote all of his concentration to his plate. But this morning, he wasn’t. No, today, he seemed to be devoting all of his attention to Dean.

She didn’t even know if she’d classify it as overt _staring_ , but he sure was looking across the table at Dean a lot. And that’s all it was, just looking—even as he was putting bites of pancake or egg into his mouth, his attention seemed riveted on Dean.

And at first she couldn’t even see anything particularly noteworthy about it, beyond the simple fact that he wasn’t staring at his plate like he usually did. Because his face was the same, just that serious, intense way he had of looking at everything, from reading the exhibit placards at the zoo to examining the pair of high heels she’d tried on before asking his opinion. Except…the more she looked at him, really looked, and for those little facial tics and cues of his that she was just learning to read, she realized that it wasn’t _quite_ the same. There was just the tiniest tilt of his eyebrows, a softening around his mouth, his eyes just a little bigger and brighter than she was used to.

She flicked her eyes over to Sam and raised her eyebrows when she saw that he’d been looking at Cas, too; he just grimaced in return. After Dean had called them last night, saying that he’d be there to pick them up in the morning, Sam had complained that Dean had turned his half of the vacation into a “spoiling Cas marathon” and that they’d have to sit through the extreme discomfort of the two of them looking all drippy at each other the next day, and it’d be worse than usual because they wouldn’t have had the drive home alone to cool off. Amy had offered to make eyes at him to take his mind off it, but he’d informed her that there was no way you could ignore Dean and Cas when they were all soppy and romantic.

But now, Amy could only give him a sardonic look— _really?_ _That_ was what he called “drippy,” just Cas looking all seriously at Dean? Hell, she’d barely noticed it in the first place—and she doubted anyone who didn’t know Cas would have noticed at all. And so what if Dean had a hickey? Sam had one too. He must have just been looking for something to bitch about.

All the same, she came to his rescue anyway, turning to Cas and asking, “So, Cas—how did you like your first real vacation?”

Cas had blinked once slowly before turning towards her at the sound of his name, and gave a small sigh before answering, “It was wonderful.”

“Yeah?” she prompted, now that she knew how get Cas to actually elaborate on anything. “What’d you guys do to keep busy while Sam and I were having fun?”

“We drove all around California,” he said.

“What’d you see?”

“Dean took me to see some of the national parks.”

Patiently, around a mouthful of hashbrowns, Amy prodded, “Which ones?”

Cas finished chewing his sausage before saying, “Death Valley, Yosemite, and Redwood.”

Amy sat back in her chair. “Man, that’s awesome—good lineup, Dean,” she threw out there. Dean just grunted back at her, attacking his waffle with relish. “So, tell me some things you saw,” she said to Cas.

Cas looked thoughtful for a moment before answering, “I saw the saltpans in Death Valley, and lots of cacti, and the mountains surrounding the basin. I saw Vernal, Yosemite, and Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite, and I saw my favorite redwood tree in Redwood national forest.”

“Your favorite, huh?” she asked, amused. “You been there before?”

“Yes, many times. That tree is one thousand three hundred and twenty-six years old. I like to watch how it changes over the years,” he said. “One of its larger lower branches is broken and appears to be dying, but a new one is coming in above it. I found a pinecone that had fallen from it and I kept it,” he finished, looking down to spear another bite of pancake before looking back up at Dean.

Amy was about to ask if he kept a scrapbook on it, when she glanced over at Dean and her joke died in her mouth.

Dean had finally looked up from his breakfast, and he was looking at Cas. Those big green eyes were all wide and dewy, his long eyelashes fluttering, his head tilted just a little to the side and the sweetest little smile on his lips.

Amy’s jaw dropped.

That was, without a doubt, the _gooiest_ look she had ever seen in her _life_.

A rather loud throat-clearing started her out of her staring, and she looked over to see Sam looking very deliberately downward as he took a drink, but he flicked his eyes up over the rim of his glass to give her a quelling look.

Amy looked quickly off to the side, both to give the two of them a little, ahem, _privacy_ , and to bite her lip to keep from laughing. After a bit more of her breakfast, and when she was sure that Dean had turned his attention back to his plate, she took a drink and brightly asked Cas if he’d seen any good wildlife.

Cas nodded into his orange juice, and when she asked what, exactly, he replied with, “I saw a roadrunner eating a snake in Death Valley, I saw some elk and a salamander and many different types of birds in Redwood, and while in Yosemite I saw a herd of deer and a marmot and a black bear.”

Dean looked up at that. “Whoa, dude, a _bear_? You didn’t say anything about a bear—when was that?”

“It was when we went hiking in the valley on the second day there,” Cas said calmly. “You’d wanted to follow the trail to the river, but I went up higher to see the view of the mountains.”

“That’s awesome,” Amy said. “My dad took our family out to Yellowstone when my brother and I were kids, and we saw a family of black bears when we were driving through one of the canyons. They were right there on the opposite side of the river.”

“This bear was alone,” Cas said. “It was very slow and fat; I think it was close to its hibernation period.”

“Probably, this time of year,” Sam remarked. “What was it doing?”

“Foraging for grubs in the stump next to the rock I was sitting on. It came close enough that I was able to scratch its ears.”

Loud exclamations of shock and the clatter of forks on plates erupted around the table; Cas looked startled.

“ _Scratch its ears?_ ” Dean demanded. “What the _hell_ , Cas?!”

“I didn’t disturb it,” Cas said defensively.

“Cas,” Sam said, “those are _wild animals_!”

Cas’s chin was poking out a little. “It enjoyed having its ears scratched,” he retorted.

“That’s not the _point_ , Cas!” Amy chimed in. “Those things are _dangerous_. Feeding the birds at the zoo is one thing—but you don’t mess with _bears_ , sweetie. That thing could have mauled you!”

Cas’s brows furrowed. “I wasn’t in any danger. It wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“You don’t know that!” she exclaimed.

“Yes I do,” he said earnestly.

“ _How?!_ ”

Cas’s mouth opened—and then shut with a snap. His eyes widened slightly, and he looked quickly at both Sam and Dean before saying in a halting, stilted tone, “…Because I…remained perfectly still.” And then he hurriedly went back to eating his breakfast, his eyes firmly fixed on his plate.

Amy stared at him, and then turned to look incredulously at Sam and Dean—only to see them go wide-eyed and look right down at their plates too.

Amy blinked a moment, and then remarked to the air, “You know, I get the feeling that I’m being excluded from something.”

Sam coughed. “Uh…yeah, you are,” he said, glancing up. “And it involves things that you’ve asked to be excluded from.”

It took only a moment for it to click in Amy’s brain—the only thing she’d ever asked to be left out of was what the boys did for a living. And although she was instantly wildly curious to know just what kind of supernatural shit Cas had done to make it where birds weren’t afraid of him and freaking bears didn’t attack him, she firmly reined it in and followed her own policy of staying well out of it. “Right,” she said cheerfully. “Carry on, then.”

After a few moments of just chewing noises, Amy took the initiative to pick the conversation up from where Cas had killed it. “Man—giant redwoods and bears, huh? Makes Sam and my vacation sound pretty dull.”

Dean snorted. “Lemme guess—Broadway showtunes and art galleries?” His statement was directed as much at Sam as herself.

“Half-right,” she replied. “Art yes, but no theater—but he did take me to a silent movie.”

Dean pulled a face. “Man, that’s worse—could you get any more artsy-fartsy?” he demanded, rounding on his brother. “At least tell me you copped a feel in the theater.”

Sam rolled his eyes and Amy just laughed. “Hey, arty-fartsy it may have been, but he did get laid at the end of it.”

Dean looked thoughtful for a moment, and then leaned over to deliver a congratulatory punch to Sam’s shoulder. “I take it back, dude—well played,” he said.

Sam looked mildly embarrassed and irritated at the topic of discussion, as he usually did when she and Dean were teasing each other (and him) about their sex life, but also amused in spite of himself. “Can’t argue with results,” he quipped, giving an air toast, and Amy, who had been taking a sip of coffee herself, snorted into her cup and gave him a warm look over the rim.

Sam smiled back at her and reached across the table to cover her free hand with his own. “And I certainly didn’t think it was dull.”

Dean grimaced. “Come on, man—quit with the goo-goo eyes,” he grumbled, looking down at his plate. “Puttin’ me off my bacon.”

Amy’s jaw dropped in disbelief as she rounded on Dean, completely unable to believe what she’d just heard him have the _gall_ to say.

And then she jumped at the kick under the table that hit her ankle, and she looked back at Sam to see him surreptitiously making a frantic “cut” motion across his throat.

Amy concentrated on her breakfast, trying her damnedest to keep from telling Dean to stick it where the sun don’t shine (or just from busting out laughing in his face), and didn’t look up until she had it under control.

Sam and Dean were the kings of shoveling in their food on the go, even when they didn’t need to, and Cas, what with his stellar conversational skills, wasn’t far behind. So they weren’t there for much longer; Dean had already wiped out the last of his food and Sam was just a few bites away from the same. Amy rushed to finish her own short stack, occasionally prodding Cas for more details of his trip (and when she did get him to talk about it, she invariably was treated to yet another obliviously syrupy look from Dean).

They didn’t stick around long after eating—they did have a 1,700-mile drive ahead of them—and just made quick restroom breaks before moving to bug out. Amy snatched the ticket—she’d been paying for meals along with some of the gas along the way, felt it was the least she could do since she was bumming the ride off of them (not to mention that hers was real money—and she had more of it than all three of them put together).

“Sammy’s got him a sugar mamma,” Dean smirked, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “Thanks, Amy,” he said with a wink, and then sauntered towards the door.

Cas paused in his investigation of the peppermint dish beside the register to give her one of his serious thank-yous and then scuttled off in Dean’s wake. Sam stayed in as she handed her credit card to Cheryl behind the register; once they were safely out the door, she turned to Sam with all the incredulous hilarity that she’d had to suppress. “ _Wow_ ,” she said. “Just _wow_.”

Sam gave a slightly pained laugh. “I did tell you,” he said.

She held up her hands. “And you were right. I mean, Cas isn’t so bad—”

“Oh, yes he is,” Sam interrupted grimly.

“—but Dean?” she finished over him. “Oh my _God_ —who does he think he’s _fooling_?”

“Dean is very stupid,” Sam said, his voice firm.

Amy snorted. “I’ll say—I haven’t seen anyone look that lovestruck outside of Elmer Fudd getting a load of Bugs in drag.” She took her card back and left Cheryl a good tip, tucking away the receipt in the inner pocket of her purse.

“Thank God we don’t look like that,” Sam said as they swung towards the door.

“I dunno,” Amy mused. “You’ve got all that long shaggy hair, and it hangs all down in your face when you get those sad puppy eyes with those pitiful eyebrows like when you tell me that you have to leave soon…” She trailed off and looked up at Sam to find him looking fixedly ahead, already starting to get that bitchy pursed mouth of his. She grinned, and when he swung the door open for her, she couldn’t help but reach up and grab his shoulder to pull him down to her. “Well, _I_ like it,” she said, and gave him a kiss.

Only to jump at the sudden loud blare of Dean leaning on the horn.

Amy looked out at the parking lot, annoyed, to see him pulling a face of exaggerated impatience, so she just grinned brightly and shot him the finger. When she glanced over at Sam, she was amused to see that he was doing the same, only he looked a lot more pissed about it, which just made her laugh, and, well, the perfect answer was to look Dean right in the eye and kiss Sam again. But it was just a quick one, and then she slipped her arm around his middle and tugged him toward the car, to join Dean and Cas in the car and head on home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you to everyone for, appropriately enough, your patience while Mervin and were recovering from RL’s repeated bitch-slaps. Also, enormous thank-yous to everyone who read and enjoyed our take on a Sam/OC fic—I know those are touchy, and we’re terribly happy that you liked the girlfriend we gave him. We’ll have one more Amy aside in another fic for you, but in general, from here on out, it’s all just gonna be a bunch of really pervy D/C porn. Thanks again to all our readers, old and new, and keep an eye out for further updates.


End file.
